Lunch Time Reading

... or Shitter Time Reading. Really it can go by either name. What I am talking about, of course, is what you read either during your lunch or on your shitter.

Everyone has their go to for this situation. For daily use, I have the UniWatch blog or perhaps cnet.com. For actual magazines, usually Car and Driver or Maxim.

And then there are those special readings, the ones that you only get once a month or so. I'm not talking about a magazine, but a single article that, when published, you print off and bring with you for when 'the time is right.'

For me those special readings come from Bill Simmons. Those of you who are not into sports or despise ESPN, which is understandable, may have no idea who Bill Simmons is. Quite simply put he is one of the funniest SOBs to pen anything on the net. He could turn the most mundane of situations into high class hilarity.

My readings for the past four days? His return trip to Vegas found in two parts: Part 1 - Part 2

It is just one of those things that literally makes me laugh while I read it. Of course it draws funny stares (especially if you come out of a stall laughing) but its well worth it.

A recent gem from the discussing of creating a Real Men of Genius Hall of Fame

And my friend Wildes thinks we should throw in the first guy who looked at a cow and said "F this, I'm drinking that milk" in a fit of thirsty bestiality. Source

I snorted some horseradish up the ole olfactory area when I read that.

I ask you, oh loyal readers, if you have anything you use for your lunch time/shitter reading. I'm always up for something interesting to kill time.

I Always Wonder...

I was bored this morning and looking through the entrance links to this blog. Yes readers, I can see how you ended up here.

And I got to thinking, at least once a day I'll see a link that came from someone's inbox. I've always wondered what I did to warrant being e-mailed to another person. Or even what context it was emailed in.

It is really weird to see this blog being emailed across the country considering I just started this as a place to centralize my crazy ass work stories. Hell the last two email related links I've found where to Mexico. I'm international now baby.

Damn, does this mean I have to learn spanish?

Edit: I noticed in the last hour I've had significant hits from two of the pharmacy schools I'm applying to. Interesting....

It's My Birthday!

What I have learned these past twenty-four years...

* Brake fluid and bleach, when combined, make a shit ton of smoke
* Eating beer and buffalo wings all night long make a sufficient laxative
* Peeing on an electric fence doesn't hurt... touching your penis to that same electric fence does
* Stoners make massively entertaining friends
* People are far more stupid than we give them credit for
* A 600 pound woman can, in fact, find a tube top to stuff herself into

* Sharting is not as rare of a phenomenon as you are lead to believe
* Alcohol can make anything look sexy... including trees
* One of my friends has a fetish for trees when he's drunk. See above
* Lighting farts on fire is possible
* Punching bank windows, when you need more beer money, will lead to a broken hand
* Drunken backflips off of a roof of a car do not end well
* Chemistry is not as useless as it is made out to be
* Slapping a taper on the ass, in a zoo, is NOT a good idea

Some day I'm gonna sit down and write myself a book. Until then, its on to the quarter century mark!

Pfizer Was Fined 132,544,978 Viagra Tablets... And No One Cares

*Note that total was based off the AWP of Viagra 100mg as of the date of this post

I find it kind of funny how the news can be flooded when our president swats a fly, but when the largest pharmaceutical company in the world is fined $2.3 billion for lying to the American people, no one cares.

In what authorities called the largest criminal fine in history, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. has agreed to pay $1.3 billion, plus $1 billion in civil penalties, for peddling drugs to treat conditions for which the federal government had not approved the medications. Source

Now I knew Pfizer had been spanked by the FDA this year, but I had not realized they were spanked that hard. Yes, they have the funds to pay that kind of cash, but that is a huge wake up call to any of the other dipshit companies who try to pull this.

The settlement focused mainly on Pfizer's promotion of Bextra, an anti-inflammatory drug pulled from the market in 2005 for safety reasons. Source

I was on Bextra for a while after a neck injury when I was 17. It worked beautifully... but it wasn't designed for that use. I remember people coming in who were prescribed Bextra for migraines. That's when I found out what it was actually intended to be used for and it was the first time I heard the phrase 'off-label use'.

Plus you think they would learn after a while

Government attorneys noted this is actually the fourth settlement with Pfizer or one of its subsidiaries since 2002 over illegal marketing, but the fines for those cases totaled only $513 million. Source

So... you haven't learned eh? The biggest and bestest company in its industry in the world can't follow the rules? Sounds familiar...

Pfizer was also accused of fraudulently marketing the anti-psychotic drug Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and the epilepsy treatment Lyrica. Source

The Lyrica one we have become aware of over the past year. Seems as if that is the drug of choice for damn near every condition as of late.

Have a cough? Take 50mg of Lyrica. Trouble growing flowers in your garden this year? Take 75mg of Lyrica.

The kicker is, as far as I can tell, this didn't even make a blip in the news media. Pfizer was effectively dickslapped by the government and the headline on CNN was about a 'John School' for prostitution offenders. Uh huh...

I really feel sorry for Pfizer's stockholders. They have virtually nothing in their drug pipeline for when all their blockbusters go off patent in the next 2-3 years and, I would assume, their planned deal with Wyeth is going to fall through now. I can't imagine Wyeth would allow themselves to be involved with such negative publicity, but then again standards in this country are quite low nowadays.

And that is why the Viagra is so sad in that picture above. Poor poor Viagra.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

I mentioned here what I had planned for this past lovely summer. Since classes started back up today, lets make sure I accomplished everything I wanted.

Retake Gen Chem I - Check! Passed with an A
Retake PCAT - Check! See here
Get Married - Check! See here

And finally, my nerdiest endeavor of the summer. I mentioned I was going to start back up doing some sim racing. Well I did end up picking up that wheel and pedal set I wanted


And I drove many different cars, Example 1, Example 2 and Example 3. And ended up the summer with a decent set of stats.

All in all it was a damn fine summer. Now it's time to finish those damned pharmacy school apps...

I'm Becoming a Bigger Asshole Each Day

One of my pet peeves in life is when people don't want to take care of themselves. It's always something or someone else's fault. They expect everyone else in society to cater to their needs at their discretion.

And it pisses me off.

Personally one of the greatest strengths a person can display is to admit that they are wrong. Many people would rather drink Hydrochloric Acid than admit they were wrong. Hell I have a post on here that I have received a lot of feedback on and I know that I was wrong in posting it (don't worry a revised post is in the works).

In pharmacy, one encounters this problem on a daily basis. We're supposed to watch over the thousand plus patients that our store serves every single day. My example?

Earlier a woman came to our drive thru to pick up some prescriptions for her dad. One of the drugs is Proscar 5mg which we did not have. We only have two patients on that particular drug, so we generally keep only one bottle on the shelf at a time for cost reasons. We've never had a problem before as they do not get their refills filled in the same window. Until now.

I explain to her that we do not have the drug in stock and that we would have it by 11am tomorrow morning. She then asked 'why the hell we do not keep drugs in stock that our patients take at all times' and that she was going out of town for a week and that 11am wasn't good enough for her.

She also lived in an adjacent town which caused even more 'difficulty' for her as she would have to drive back and leave for her trip an hour later.

Ya know what, it's not my fucking problem. Anyone who gets prescriptions filled on a regular basis knows that usually there is a snag or two along the way. If I'm going out of town, would I call everything in on a Sunday right before I leave?

Fuck no. I would use that mound of material in my head, you know a brain, and plan ahead just in case. I have no qualms when someone comes in a week before they leave with a list of things they'll need. Hell I'll gladly call and get overrides for a person who does that.

Instead I'm supposed to watch over someone else even though they are fifty-some years old. Perhaps next time you should think things through a little better and not blame me when shit goes south.

And no I did not relay these feelings to her at all. I merely smiled, nodded and found a store that had it so she could get it when they opened at 8am.

Yet I can't help what think what I an asshole thought it was that I had. Then again maybe you have to be an asshole to do this job.