Pharmaceutical Creationism

If you’re on Medicare, you can now sign up for some kind of discount. Part D, it’s called. D for dazed or dumbfounded or damn it what are they talking about, anyway?

There are a bazillion plans on the market and they’ve been advertising heavily for months.

All of the plans have this in common: they’re part spider web and part rats nests, with a maze or two thrown in for good measure. A mine field in a moving roller coaster.

Breathtakingly complicated, hard to maneuver, scary.

It’s touted by our Esteemed Leaders as a way to bring discount drugs to The Great Unwashed Masses, which would be all of us who aren’t either Esteemed or Leaders

The real answer, the simplest answer is to nationalize the drug companies, fund the research (which is mostly the government, anyway,) and sell the drugs at little or no profit.

That's impossible. At least it's impossible here and now.

So the next best thing to do is to form a few "public benefit corporations," or "public benefit authorities" like the MTA subway/bus/rail/bridge system in New York. Then issue bonds, and use the money to buy large chunks of the stocks of the majors on the open market, and control their activities that way.

The present plan, signing up for some kind of half baked discount, is complicated and if you believe the news accounts, a lot of people aren't going to do it because they don't understand it.

You've seen countless ads for various health plans and other companies that are trying to convince people to sign up. They all say the same thing: "it's complicated. we make it simple. you CAN benefit up to 'x' dollars a year."

Well, what they really mean is "use our plan. we'll screw you over no worse than the other guys."

Next, you’ll likely see the Lotions and Potions crowd, (which would dearly love to be referred to as the homeopathic remedy and diet supplement industry) hop on the bandwagon. It’s kind of like “Intelligent Design.”

After all, they’ll tell you, medicines are iffy. Just a theory. Like Darwin. Not curing anything and only dealing with symptoms.

So why not also discount those little sugar pills you stick under your tongue when you injure yourself. Or the pills that grow hair, improve memor and clean out your impacted bowels.

(Aside: "Gold Bond Medicated Powder" and "Focus Factor" are not chemically similar and not the same thing as Ovalitine.)

And what about wine? It’s supposedly good for your heart? So why not a wine discount?

Orange juice. Diet plans. Health club memberships. Where is the American “can-do” spirit, here? These people don’t usually let the grass grow under their feet.

Unlikely they will now, either.

Tropicana, Ernest & Julio Gallo, Jack LaLanne, Dr. Atkins, where ARE you?

And what about coffee, enough to keep you awake while filling out those sleep-evoking forms? A medicinal coffee discount! Yes!

Somebody’s going to benefit from this benefit. Not you, though.

The fundamental problem is that Congress doesn't write laws anymore. They're written by "advocates" and "consultants" and (oh my god!) lobbyists.

That's got to stop. But it won’t.

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

©wjr 2005

Sorry, Wrong Number

There’s some kind of screwup in the software at the phone company.

The result is twofold. First, the cellphone rings a lot with calls for American Express, the New York Times, Medicare, Blue Cross and Nextel, which is not the carrier that sold the phone.

Thing Two: customers of American Express, the New York Times, Medicare, Blue Cross and Nextel are (a) frustrated, (b) unable to reach the people they want to call and (c) befuddled.

How does this happen? The Carrier doesn’t seem to know. They just apologize “for the inconvenience.”

If it happened once or twice or even ten times, it would be annoying, but possibly understandable. But it happens every day. That’s not a metaphor or an analogy or a figure of speech. It happens EVERY day. Usually more than once.

The Carrier says it’s all to do with the routing of toll free “800” calls to local numbers and the computer missing a number or two and sending the call to the wrong phone. Some techno-babble that no one can understand, apparently including the engineers at the Carrier.

Many new friends, now. Anonymous phone friends. People who want to check their credit card balance or buy travelers checks or find out why their newspaper wasn’t delivered this morning, or whether fixing their ingrown toenails need pre-authorization.

A typical call goes like this:

Caller: “I want to know why I didn’t get my paper this morning. Is it because someone’s stealing it or is it just that your deliveryman doesn’t know what he’s doing. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Callee: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this isn’t the newspaper. It’s a private phone, a cell phone and…”

Caller: “Is this 1 800- 245 67…”

Callee: “It’s not 800 anything, ma’am, it’s just a telephone and….”

Caller: Click.

You’d think they could fix this, but apparently they can’t. Not after years and years of allegedly trying.

Since each incoming call costs one of those precious “any time minutes,” this new form of recreation mounts up.

There’s a strong preference for the customers to call during daylight hours. That’s good because who wants to be awakened at midnight for a balance check? But it’s bad because incoming calls at off hours are not billed.

Maybe the Carrier has a room full of callers (probably somewhere in Afghanistan,) who make random calls to cell phones to run up higher bills.

Given the wage scale in Afghanistan, and the cost of an “any time minute,” they probably come out ahead of the game.

Either that or the call center and the telephone service itself are on two different budgets, budgets that never meet and don’t talk to one another… and they rake in the sheckles or drachmas or whatever they use for money in Afghanistan.

And who is the “Carrier?”

In the interest of fairness and a level playing field, there will be no actual identification. But you already know it’s not Nextel. It’s also not Sprint. And it’s not AT&T. And it’s not Cingular.

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

©wjr 2005

The Oldest Profession

It’s not what you think. It’s not the one you’ve heard all your life.

The oldest profession is gossip.

Now, we call it news reporting.

Those paintings they’re always discovering on the walls of caves? What do you think that is? Great Art? Great Scott, it’s not!

It’s a newspaper – only there was no paper or ink in those days, so they used what they had: stone and paint.

They say stuff like “The quick marriage between Zarg and Ook is kaput. Zarg was seen at forest clearing #51 holding hands with Blapp, then slipped off to her cave for the night.”

Hieroglyphics? Same thing: “King Farouk has spent the Cairo treasury down to its last thousand dollars, and will have to raise taxes.”

Folk songs? Same thing: “It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.”

As technology has improved, the newsies have multiplied.

But it’s the same old stuff.

Only now we get it from 500 television channels, 500 radio stations and satellites, the newspapers and magazines like “Paris Hilton Digest,” internet sites like “The Sludge Report” and “The Shopping Guide.”

So let’s not get too huffy about people like Judith Miller or any of the other reporters and “institutions” that we shun – or pretend to shun here in the 21^st century.

Since all of society is on cultural steroids, why should she be any different?

In colonial days, one of the risks of being a pamphleteer with an unpopular viewpoint was having a couple of goons with sledgehammers break down your door and bust up your printing press.

Now, we have courtrooms and jail houses instead.

Gossip from the respectable newspapers and TV channels. Gossip from the neighbors. Gossip from government handouts.

All the same thing.

And all have been with us in one form or another since we creatures learned to make and use language.

On any given day sources of “information” ranging from the Lofty New York Times or the Nightly News down the line to this lowly blog-site can be full of truth or full of shit. Or anything in between.

And how do you know which is which? You don’t.

You have to rely on your own judgment. And on what do you base that?

In cave days, you could pretty easily confirm the story about Zarg and Ook and Blapp.

Today, it’s much tougher.

So you do what any normal, rational citizen would do, you consult your beliefs.

If you don’t believe in gravity, it doesn’t matter. Gravity will do what it does, with or without your agreement.

If you believe the world is too complex to have happened at random, well – who knows whether you’re right or wrong.

If you believe we should be killing American soldiers in Iraq because it’s the right thing to do, who’s to say.

If you believe that the oncoming subway is an illusion, and jump in front of it, you may have some trouble.

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

©wjr 2005

Got A Match?

Maybe you’ve noticed this: the heads of matches have shrunk to the point you can’t get a decent light from one – you need two or three to get a respectable flame.

Probably it’s a money saver. The match companies use less chemical and cut the cost of manufacturing.

Probably, they have a non-justification justification for this, like “it makes for a more efficient building process,” or “we found that people want lighter lights,” or “shrunken heads don’t matter because we’re using materials that flame hotter.”

All of that may be true. But the final result is you use more matches.

A careful examination of the facts, performed at the Wessays Secret Seaside Laboratory: Today’s matches are no hotter than older ones with full size heads.

They do not burn any slower.

Further, in testing, using the famed “burned fingertip test” developed at Cal Tech in the 1960s, scientists at the Secret Seaside Lab have determined that not only are the match heads smaller than they used to be, but the stems are weaker.

Hence, it is easier to burn one’s fingers, using the “burned fingertip test.”

Not a pretty picture. And painful, unless you’re Gordon Liddy, who advises us in “All the President’s Men” that the secret is “not minding that it hurts.”

We’ve come to accept that the chocolate cartel reduces the size of a candy bar without raising the price or reducing the size of the packaging. They even have a legitimate claim to the idea that the smaller amount means fewer calories, less fat, fewer carbs and less sugar, which may mean healthier candy.

We’ve come to hope that the car makers will reduce the engine size if that’s what it takes to use less gasoline.

It’s even okay that a two-by-four is less (sometimes significantly less) than two-by-four.

The match makers have no such justification.

Or do they?

Perhaps there is a metaphor here.

Why not carry this so-far shady idea into other areas of life.

Like reducing the number of words in any legal document.

If a contract were short and simple, you might be willing to pay your lawyer extra for the clarity.

Take a 5,000 word deed and turn it into this:

“Here is a house. It’s address is 409 Sandcast Boulevard, Moote Pointe, New York, 11566. Its assessed valuation is $483,000 as of 11/1/05. It’s owner is Philip J. Curtainrod.”

You’d pay big bucks for a three line deed.

How about reducing the number of letters in some common words: Kidnaped. Exces. Veranzano. Delicatesen. Wesays.

Even the alphabet can be cut. Why do we need both “c” and “k,” when “k” and “s” cover pretty much everything with those sounds. Eliminate “c,” and you have a sleeker, more efficient alphabet. (the “ch” sound could be replaced by “kh.”

Yes, take a tip from the matchmakers. There’s something to be said for a weak stem and a little head.

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

©wjr 2005

Election Day '05

If you watch enough TV cop shows, you know by now that one of the big catch phrases is “there are no coincidences.”

If there are two dead bodies, one M.O. in the same neighborhood at around the same time, chances are there’s only one perp.

The TV Cops should give lessons to the real-life politicians, who would then stop insulting our intelligence with both word and deed.

Political coincidences are a little less cut and dried. But only a little.

Is it a mere coincidence that the amount of highway construction ramps up during the summer before election?

Is it a mere coincidence that the price of gasoline falls all the way down to outrageous just before election day.

Look at the pump! What was $3.25 or even $3.59 a week or two ago now is $2.47.

A miracle! A downright miracle.

It’s hard to say how an office seeker might force ExxonMobil and others to cut their prices, if only temporarily.

But put nothing between an office seeker and the electorate around election day. If there’s a way to do it, these inventive men and women will have figured it out and done it.

It’s surprising that there isn’t a way to make abortion laws both more and less restrictive at the same time.

It’s hard to believe no one’s yet figured out a way to continue and end the war at the same time.

It’s astonishing to notice that no one has been able to control the price of drugs and maintain a free market in the price of drugs at the same time.

It’s not so hard to believe that they’ve figured out a way to make taxes go both up and down at the same time.

How?

Easy. Cut federal taxes. Everyone gets a check signed by the President.

Then, to make up the shortfall, everyone also gets a new and higher bill from the city or the county or the school district or the state or all of the above.

The good news for most of us is that when the election is over, all this stuff will go away, or at least leave our immediate consciousness.

The major political parties are two giant corporations. They’re like the auto companies: essentially, they’re all selling a frame, a body, four wheels and an engine.

They may be incrementally different, but essentially, they’re the same frame, body, wheels and engine.

And look what’s happened to the car companies after 80 or 90 years of that nonsense. Three are left, one of which is foreign-owned and the other two are talking about bankruptcy protection – which was unthinkable only a decade or so ago.

Maybe it’s time for the Republicans and Democrats to file for Chapter Eleven.

But not until the roads are all smooth and the price of gasoline hits $1.99.

The office seekers think that we think they walk on water (or on gasoline.)

Got a match?

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

©wjr 2005

Talk Talk Talk

Want a decent conversation? Start talking to strangers.

Not chat room strangers, real ones. Strangers on the street. On the subway. In the diner.

We’ve been told that the art of conversation is dead. Not even close. The art of conversation is alive and well. It’s just that your friends are boring and your relatives have ulterior motives.

Let’s rewind that for a moment. Your friends aren’t necessarily boring. But you know their rap and they know yours. It’s like having the same conversation over and over again.

And your relatives -- well, maybe they DON’T have ulterior motives. But you know that there are certain things you can’t discuss with them, lest you raise points that’ll never be solved and that will just cause everyone grief.

So do this New York thing: horn in on a convo. If you’re REALLY not welcome, you’ll find out soon enough. The conversers whose territory you’ll be invading will give you the Dark Glare Of Death. Or they’ll just tell you to shove off.

Most people are too polite for that.

Plus, we humans are social beings, even most of the sociopaths among us, and thus are willing to talk with anyone about anything.

Just don’t be like the Oysters in “Alice In Wonderland.” They tried to stop a fight between the Walrus and the Carpenter, and ended up becoming dinner after the combatants resumed rationality.

Other than that… there’s all kinds of fun and interesting stuff that can happen among people who don’t know each other and assume they will never again meet.

The other day at a restaurant, Iron Grey Joe was waxing poetic about the mayor of the city of New York.

In the midst of his poetic endorsement of said mayor’s re-election, he said something outrageously untrue. So, he got corrected. The conversation then doubled to include two tables of diners instead of one.

It would have been nice to continue. But Iron Grey Joe and his poetic wax suffered a seizure or stroke or heart palpitation, and attention was turned suddenly and permanently to getting the cops and the ambulance on site and Joe to the hospital.

This is not a typical end to one of these horn-in-on-the-conversation conversations. Usually, you end up learning something and teaching something.

The opportunities for good talk, good learning and good teaching are endless, especially if there’s no ulterior motive.

If one of these happens at a pick up bar, it will be less spontaneous and more stilted than if it happens while waiting for the light to turn green.

We, remember, are as boring and same-subject as our friends and as touchy as our relatives. The way to have a fresh start every day is to … well, start fresh every day. Or every other day. Or even every week.

The art of conversation is not dead. It’s just sick, and lacks health insurance.

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

©wjr 2005

Toaster Wars

The simple act of buying a toaster has become like so much else around here. You have to be an expert.

It’s not exactly like buying a car. But close. The product rating organizations don’t say much about these machines. Maybe they should.

The need for one of these arose on a recent morning when Old Bernie The Toaster finally breathed his last. Old Bernie, so-named because he had two settings that worked: dark and charcoal.

That morning’s toast was made in the microwave. Here’s a handy household hint: microwaves can’t make toast. They can make hot bread. Soggy hot bread if you drip a little water on the slice. But not toast.

Where to go?

The first foray was to Gigunda-Mart, where everyday low prices are the rule.

Fifty different toasters. Two slice. One slice. Four slice. Even six slice. Prices from ten bucks to about 30.

Flimsy junk from overseas. But cheap.

Nothing seemed to leap off the shelf, which probably is a good thing because one of those would likely crash to its death on hitting the floor. Ugly.

All those Gigunda-Mart employees you can never find when you need help because they’re out calculating their overtime and fringe benefits would gravitate to the aisle where the toaster was screaming in its final agony. And, of course, “you broke it, you bought it.”

Next foray: the mid-price department store, where the array was slightly smaller, the prices slightly higher and the parking closer.

“Toasters?” said the guy with the carnation on his lapel? “Just go through the men’s suits, pass through the cosmetics and jewelry departments and head downstairs.”

Final stop: the specialty retailer, Gourmet Tools Paradise, which specializes in $200 carving knives and things that look like kitchen implements but that no one but Martha Stewart knows what to call – and even SHE doesn’t know how to use.

They had toasters, alright. Bottom price, $150. Beautiful red or yellow or blue enamel finish. Precisely calibrated temperature controls. None of this “light-medium-dark” baloney. AND “Guaranteed To Make Perfect Toast Every Time.”

So, toasters are ten bucks at Gigunda-Mart and 150 at Gourmet Tools Paradise. That’s some spread.

And does this machine (it’s just a couple of heating coils, after all,) do bagels? “Oh NO, sir. Of COURSE not. We have a special bagel toaster you can buy, but this one just does sliced bread.”

Perish forbid they make the slots a little wider to accommodate hand cut bread or rolls or bagels!

Why don’t they? “Oh, sir, that would cause the heat to be distributed unevenly and obviate the ability to guarantee “…Perfect Toast Every Time.”

Of course!

The next morning, the toast went into the seldom-used stove. This is a bad idea. Not even the resident seagulls would touch what came out of the oven.

Maybe someone can fix Old Bernie.

Either that or it’s Special K for breakfast from now on.

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