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November 30, 2004: The Golden Age of The Internet

An old joke asks “What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?” Answer: “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Da-boom-ching. It’s not a funny joke, is it? That’s because it’s hackneyed. Exhausted from its repeated use--like the previous two seasons of “Everybody Loves Raymond” or Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck” routine, which, truth told, was never, ever, EVER, I repeat, NEVER EVER, laugh-out-loud funny, but was a curious satire of the rednecks it entertained, and, as a result, briefly satisfied those of us who were not rednecks. Kinda like Carroll O’Connor’s “Archie Bunker,” the lovable bigot, who made bigots and intellectuals giggle in the 1970s. Except if Archie Bunker had told a redneck joke, it would have been funny, albeit in a nasty, yet endearing, bigoted way. But I digress.

My point, of course, is that the reelection of George Bush is not cause for pessimism. Ask yourself: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” You’re not. I know. And I concede that. But guess what? There has never been a better time for you to exercise your freedom of expression--as long as you remember not to express your dissent in the presence of The Man™. Aside from that, we, the people, do have the power. All it takes is a connection to the internet, a few moments of your time, and a blogger account, and you can voice your opinions for everyone.

Remember life before the internet? The Nixon years? The Reagan years? The Bush the First years? We remember “Watergate,” “Iran-Contra,” and “Read My Lips” because that’s what the media told us. But who knows what the media didn’t tell us then. . . . We don’t know. That’s because we always relied on the press to educate and inform us. The biased, corporate-fueled media that reports news designed to turn the biggest profit possible for its shareholders and overpaid chief executive officers gave us our information. Sound scary? It should. That was life before the rise of the internet.

Now here’s the really scary part: It’s only a matter of time before the “Golden Age” of the internet ends. Cynic that I am, I don’t think it will be long before you’ll have to pay to use the internet. It may not be next year, or five years, but it will be soon. And we’ll be talking about the days when you could surf for free, and post megabytes of your rants for cheap. And if we’re not careful, we’ll lose our freedom to exchange information and our opinions.

Imagine: Life without the “internets.” Shudder.

November 25, 2004: Another Weird Dream

Remember this one? Well, this morning’s dream surpasses that other one’s strangeness quotient. Here’s the deal:

I’ve co-written a song with a woman who resembles Ellie May of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” This woman’s clan, who also resembles the aforementioned hillbillies is there, too. The song is for “Lenny, the Lizard” and “Benny, the Bear,” neither of whom is present. The song I’ve helped the Ellie Mae lady write is called, “We Want to Keep Our Fixtures.” And the Ellie Mae lady and her folks are belting out the song , which has landed on American Top 40, to me.

And you want to know the really weird part? I still have this song’s tune in my head.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

November 24, 2004: Home, Part II

Home, Part I, is here.

You know what? I’ve never understood why it takes an eternity and forty-five minutes for the pharmacist to fill your prescriptions. You’ve got one bottle. You’ve got dozens of pills. All you need to do is count the correct pills, place them in the bottle, and give them to me.  It’s an even simpler, quicker exercise if you don’t have the pills (or the bottle) for the medication because you can tell me to come back tomorrow, or, if you’re a thoughtful and sensitive, Alan Alda type, you can suggest alternative medicine shops for me to find the prescriptions. Of course, I don’t expect you to engage me in idle chat or smile. But filling my wife’s prescriptions should not take you more than five minutes, and it certainly should not take longer than the time I need to consume an entire one-third pound Thickburger™ and a Coke® from the Hardee’s next door. Yes, your shiny nameplate mentions that you are a licensed pharmacist, but, truth told, you do not need any degree to offer me efficient service. (Although, truth told, I’m not sure I agree that anyone needs a degree to count the correct pills to place in a bottle, either.)

Back in the day when I was a single geek, I would have aired my above rant in the store, caused an uproar, and left the store without the medication. Single geeks can do this stuff with impunity. When you’re single, you can engage in angry tirades at your local Rite Aid without repercussion--or at least until your reaction provokes a response from the Charleston police. Over the last five years, however, I have learned that although my wife often shares the same sentiments I do about our daily inconveniences, she does not share my enthusiasm for informing everyone else in the Rite Aid about them. And as a husband who borders on the uxurious, I bit my tongue, held my sarcasm, and waited for the pharmacist to fill a portion of my wife’s medications. This is because as a happily married geek, I simply wanted to get home, read a couple books to Seth, and be with my family for the first time in nearly two weeks.

When I reached Seth’s bedroom, he was sitting in his rocking chair with a book, and clamored for me to read him “Sock Monkey Goes To Hollywood.” This book is children’s literature’s newest classic. Sock Monkey provides more entertainment than Kato Kaelin, Paris Hilton and Ryan Seacrest--other notable Hollywood puppets--do combined. Then after Seth fell asleep, we monitored my wife’s blood pressure.

The next morning, we all awoke at 6:30 a.m. When I use “we” here, that means me, my wife, Seth, Lydia and my mother-in-law. My wife’s blood pressure required her to take the medication the pharmacy did not have the previous day. So we spent the next hour searching for an open pharmacy that also had stock of the needed prescription. The only “24-hour” pharmacy in our area did not have the medication. That was at 7:30 a.m.

At 7:45 a.m., I drove to the next closest Rite Aid, which we thought opened at 8:00 a.m. We were only partially correct. The pharmacy did not open until 9:00. But this time, the Rite Aid employee proved more helpful, and gave me directions to another “local” Rite Aid, which has a pharmacy that opened at 8:00.

Local, of course, is a relative term. I had to drive another ten miles. But I had Burl Ives to keep me company this time, and I listened to “Holly Jolly Christmas” four times before I reached the South Charleston Rite Aid.

You know where this is headed, right? Of course you do. The South Charleston Rite Aid didn’t have my wife’s blood pressure medication. Well, at least, if you follow federal law, it didn’t. It did have the medication--it just didn’t have the correct dosage prescribed for my wife. My wife needed 300 milligrams, and the store only had 100 and 200 milligram pills. To determine if the South Charleston Rite Aid were in compliance with all applicable health regulations, therefore, I queried whether it were possible for the pharmacist to give me my wife’s medication by combining the 100 and 200 pills. And I am proud to report that this Rite Aid refused my illegal request, and that I left empty-handed from this store as my wife’s blood pressure continued to require immediate treatment at home.

Guess where I went next? That’s right! I travelled back to the first Rite Aid I had visited that morning. (For those of you keeping track, that is the second Rite Aid of the three I visited.) This Rite Aid had a superior magazine rack, but, alas, no Archie comics. I decided I would wait for the pharmacy to open. This way, I could determine the effect of other customer’s on the time it takes to prepare my wife’s prescription. That was at 8:45.

The pharmacy opened on time, and I was first in line. The pharmacy had my wife’s prescription! (I asked twice to confirm it.) “How long will it take?” I stammered. “Five minutes” was the pharmacist’s reply. “Cool,” I thought, “this pharmacist must have ranked near the top of his class in common sense and customer relations.”

Still, five minutes is longer than you might think. For fun, I checked out this Rite Aid’s available brands of Trojan® condoms. And I am proud to report that the downtown Charleston Rite Aid has thirteen of Trojan’s® twenty styles for your purchase, including the brand new Trojan® “Twisted Pleasure.” I don’t want to know.

That’s fatherhood for ya.

November 23, 2004: Home, Part I

My wife’s doctor released her from the hospital yesterday evening. We were all ecstatic. Seth bounced and jumped and screamed around the house. Actually, so did I, until the wife sent me on a quest to retrieve her blood pressure medications.

Rite Aid has several stores in my area. Leave it to me, however, to select the busiest store that night. After I gave the pharmacist the prescriptions, she told me it would take forty-five minutes to fill them. That was at 7:10 p.m.

The magazine selection at this Rite Aid was lousy. I saw only one copy of a “Betty and Veronica Double Digest.” When my sister and I were little, an Archie “Double Digest” provided ample material for at least one lengthy visit to the bathroom. The stories not only held your interest, but proved entertaining on repeated bathroom visits. Now, however, I couldn’t get past the first story in this month’s issue. And please don’t think that I don’t like Betty and Veronica anymore, either. Because Betty and Veronica are still hot--even without Dan DeCarlo at the artist’s helm. But how long can you endure reading about these girls and their redundant shenanigans? Three minutes? Does Archie Comics believe that most of us want to shell nearly four bucks for this kind of pulp? You can get better value for your entertainment dollar by renting this at your local Blockbuster.

Unfortunately, I had yet to receive my portable dvd player from anyone who has a copy of my wish list, and I had to consider other options to pass the time. I was hungry, the Hardee’s next door was empty, and so I ordered a one-third pound “Thickburger” and a Coke™. And I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that I have watched “Supersize Me,” and I wholeheartedly agree with Morgan Spurlock that today’s fast food franchises offer incredibly enormous and unecessary portion sizes. I was unable to finish the entire burger--leaving a large bite--and would have required taking some of my wife’s medication had I ordered and devoured the combo meal, which included fries. When I took the last drop of my drink, in fact, I felt a little woozy from my thickburger experience. That was at 7:35 p.m.

When I returned to the pharmacy, several folks were ahead of me in line. The first lady decided that she needed to buy several bags of candy to add to her medications for that night. I’m all for impulse buying, but not when my impulses have me thinking horrible thoughts about what I might do if I have to wait another twenty minutes for my wife’s prescriptions.

Five minutes later, I reached the front of the line, and for the second time that evening, the pharmacist asked me how I spelled my name. It always encourages me when my pharmacist has trouble with spelling, especially when I ask her to fill similarly named prescriptions requiring entirely different dosages. The pharmacist checked with the other pharmacist, returned to the counter, and told me that they don’t have one of the medications my wife needs, they can fill only part of another, and it will take them another ten minutes to complete the order.

TO BE CONTINUED. . .