Friday, October 28, 2011

From The "I Work At Dundler Mifflin" File.

Dunder Mifflin, for those of you not in the know, is the fictional paper company portrayed in the TV show "The Office" Until this year the manager of this company was a character named Michael Scott, who I'm betting was a little too uncomfortably close at times to what you go through in the real world. Once in the show Michael Scott didn't quite grasp the importance of a celebration of the Indian holiday of Diwali, telling his girlfriend it was a "costume party' The girlfriend showed up as a cheerleader, to much awkwardness

Today my real pharmacy manager told my supertech, who is of Indian origin, that she should wear a sari and a bindi to the store's Halloween party. Saris and bind's are generally not considered costumes, and would produce much awkwardness to be used as such, but that did not phase the Pharmacy Manager, who brought up the idea several times

The lesson I leaned this day, Michael Scott lives.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Walgreen's Bold Vision Of The Future As It Actually Works In The Real World, Including Tips On How Addicts Can Use The POWER Program To Get A Fix

Like I said in my last post that wasn't inspired by the violent crackdown on peaceful protesters that happened in Oakland yesterday, Walgreen's, the country's largest drug store chain, has decided that big changes are in order for the profession. For the last couple years their emphasis has been on what they call the POWER program, which to recap for those of you just now tuning in, is a radical transformation of how pharmacy is practiced at the community level. POWER turns the act of filling a prescription into an exercise in industrial-type efficiency management, moving as much work as possible away from the store. Routine refills are done at a central location, phone calls are taken at a remote call center, and prescriptions themselves are scanned into a computer and verified by pharmacists working at home."The goal" a Walgreen's Vice President told Drug Topics in 2009, "is to relieve in-store pharmacists of certain tasks in order to give them more time to offer medication therapy management services"

Great. What could possibly go wrong?

"Let me start off by saying that not everything that Walgreens has done with POWER is negatively impacting our profession." says the source I've developed, who for no other reason than my love of all things Watergate I'm calling "Deep Pill." "The central fill concept is actually a good idea. Having all the next day refills filled at a separate location and then shipped to the pharmacy saves the pharmacy staff in the store a lot of time to focus on the patients who are in the store."

To do lots of Medication Therapy Management I bet, and totally not to do things like ring up potato chips and Walgreen's brand beer. 

"If POWER stopped there," Deep Pill went on,  "any of the few problems with central fill could be easily mitigated, and, even if not, the benefits would far exceed the liabilities"

Well there you go, can I just stop posting now?

"However, POWER, as you are well aware, does not stop there."

Oh crap. Although you knew that was coming, didn't you?

At this point I think I'm just gonna let Deep Pill take over, as his and/or her experience speaks for itself. Read on to see where the big thinkers in the biggest player in the profession are taking us, and our patients:


I worked in what is called the Pharmacy Care Center (PCC), which is a call center. The way it works is that, when someone calls a Walgreens store in Florida or Arizona, the call goes into a call bank where it first goes through a voice recognition automated system, then to a non-pharmacist staff member (called specialists) when the automated system does not suffice. Normally, that would be fine. That is what would happen in stores where technicians answer the phones. However, the people whom Walgreens hires for these jobs almost never have any pharmacy experience whatsoever. Walgreens is literally hiring people off the street. They do not understand, and, in many cases, lack the ability to understand how a pharmacy functions. The customers and doctors' offices can quickly ascertain this incompetence. The calls that the specialists could not resolve were transferred to the pharmacists at POWER (on the other side of the room from the specialists). Usually, we were able to resolve the calls fairly easily. One example of that early on in my career there was that the specialist was unable to clarify for the customer the meaning of the phrase "1 refill remaining before 6/19/09" printed on a prescription label. For the calls we were unable to handle for whatever reason, we pharmacists transferred the calls to the store pharmacy directly. 
Now that you understand the workflow of the call center aspect of POWER, let me break down the problems that occur at each step. While the specialists are told that they are not to answer any questions the callers may have about their drugs, they frequently did anyway. If you click on the name of the drug, you can see its common uses; however, as is the case with several drugs (e.g. gabapentin, cholestyramine, amitriptyline), the FDA-approved use is in many cases not why the drug has been prescribed. Giving the callers misleading information results in panicked callers being transferred to the pharmacist queue where we had to calm them down and correctly educate them about their medications or panicked callers hanging up and calling their doctors. This problem is exacerbated by the fact Walgreens has these specialists answer the phone as follows: "Hello. This is the registered pharmacy technician (insert first name). How can I help you?" While that statement is true about their position, most people hear the word "registered" and think that the following word is always "pharmacist". Some people do not listen closely and miss the part about technician. Others cannot discern the words after "registered" because the specialists slur them together so much (a product of answering hundreds of calls per day). This problem is annoying and troublesome, but there is a more serious issue at this step.

Here is where all you addicts should start paying attention:

When the caller wants a refill and cannot figure out how to request it online or on the automated phone system, they will speak with one of these specialists. They also tend to speak with one of the specialists if they know there is going to be an issue with the prescription (e.g. want to change from insurance to cash, pick up at different store, change quantity). The following scenario played out quite frequently. The caller wants to pick up his Lortab or Xanax refill but wants to pick it up at a different store in the area. The specialist, without looking at the last time the prescription was filled, processes the refill at a different store. The patient is then able to refill whatever prescription he wants extra early without anyone noticing because he is paying cash price. I saw many examples where this problem happened. The worst one was a customer who filled the same prescription (for Lortab 10/500 quantity of 240) 5 times in 5 days at 5 different Walgreens stores. (Yes, you can transfer a controlled substance prescription more than once if all the pharmacies have a shared database.) What made that example so much worse was that the authorized refills on that prescription were authorized by a specialist, and the "original" prescription was a bogus verbal prescription (I called the doctor to check on it) taken by one of the pharmacists at the call center.

Got that? It's way easier to phone in a fake prescription when the pharmacist isn't familiar with the community, and way easier to get early refills when the person processing them isn't even a pharmacist.

It becomes really hard for the call center pharmacists to even investigate prescriptions we believe might be fraudulent because that means not taking incoming calls for a few minutes in order to call the doctors' offices and the local Walgreens pharmacy. Everytime we stopped taking calls for any reason, the non-pharmacist managers would start getting on our case. The senior group manager of our department publicly called such time shrinkage. Having worked in retail, I know the term "shrinkage" means stealing the company's resources, either by the customers or employees. These non-pharmacist managers just wanted us to take calls and get the callers off the phone within the target time of 1 minute and 55 seconds. Therefore, many pharmacists at the call center did not even investigate the validity of any prescription so as to avoid trouble.

Seriously, you addicts should go back and read those last couple paragraphs again. And thank the God of controlled substances a Walgreen's manager invented the concept of "time shrinkage"


The other problem at the call center pharmacist step came with taking new verbal prescriptions (legitimate ones). At first, we just wrote them up by hand. Then a specialist would walk around, pick up these paper prescriptions, and scan them into the patient's profile. Then the prescription would go through the Central Utility Department. This department types and verifies new prescriptions. Therefore, these new prescriptions that we had taken would be typed up by a specialist and then verified by a pharmacist in that department. About a year after I started working at POWER, they stopped having us write the prescriptions by hand, and instead we just inputted them ourselves directly into the computer. The next step after we inputted the prescription was clinical review, or, in some cases where clinical review did not apply to the prescription, it went directly to the store to be filled. This change most definitely saved time, but it removed that additional safeguard of having a couple of different people look at the prescription to prevent careless errors (e.g. it would be easy to acidentally pick Abilify 20 mg instead of Abilify 2 mg because they are right next to each other on the scroll down tab). 
As for the store pharmacy staff, the final step in the call center chain, there are a couple of major problems. The first problem is that, due to the implementation of POWER, staffing levels in the store (pharmacy and non-pharmacy) were drastically reduced.

Wait.....I'm a little confused. Walgreens said the goal was to give store pharmacists time to do medication therapy management. How can they do this with drastically reduced staff? I don't understand. Maybe because I didn't go to business school. Or because I'm not a liar.

When a call is transferred to the pharmacy, very often there is only 1 pharmacist with 1 or 0 technicians working. That pharmacist is handling all the problems of the customers in the store and cannot pick up the phone. After a specified number of rings, the call will be terminated. If someone in the pharmacy miraculously picks up the phone, typically the pharmacy staff member will ask the caller to hold. After a specified number of minutes of holding, the call is terminated. When the call becomes disconnected by one of the previously described processes, the caller becomes irate and has to actually go to the store for service.

Sweet. So basically an integral part of POWER would seem to be hanging up on customers when you can't get to the phone.

The other larger problem comes in the prescription filling process. When there is a technician working, the technician does all the filling, and the pharmacist just stands at the cash register to sell prescriptions. Supposedly, the pharmacist is to verify prescriptions by comparing the image of the dosage form printed on the leaflet to what is actually in the prescription bottle. In many cases though, that does not happen. One reason is that the prescription is for a liquid. There is no way that can be verified because there is no image and the technicians are told to never put the stock bottle next to the bag. All the pharmacist ever receives is the plastic Ziploc bag with the labeled prescription bottle and the leaflet. Another reason is that the store pharmacy staff is so rushed due to under-staffing that they do not have time for this visual verification. The store pharmacist feels that the NDC number matched up or the label would not have been printed or however he or she rationalizes not visually verifying the prescription. I know Walgreens will state that this error is on the individual pharmacist, but the company created that environment due to its own staffing levels.

But wait.....there's more.......

My understanding of pharmacy law as it pertains to the pharmacist-technician relationship is that the technicians are to be under the supervision of a pharmacist. At the call center, there are technicians (or specialists as I call them) and pharmacists working in the room. However, the pharmacists are busy with their own calls and are not supervising the technicians. There are quality analysts listening in on the calls. However, they do not listen to all the calls, and, even if they did, these quality analysts are not pharmacists. I submit that these technicians are working without pharmacist supervision, a violation of the Florida Pharmacy Act (and probably of the pharmacy laws of any other state). Walgreens has its own representative at the Florida Board of Pharmacy. That situation seems like a conflict of interest to me and enables the company to get away with such violations. However, even still, when POWER management learns that the Board is coming to inspect, they move some of the pharmacists over to where the specialists work in order to give the illusion of supervision. Even if that enabled pharmacist supervision (which it does not because we all wear headsets and have too many of our own calls to monitor anyone else's performance), that is not how POWER typically operates. With the exception of visits from the Board or from corporate, the specialists and pharmacists do not sit together.

"Well at least Walgreen's never tried to have technicians do the type of work that the law says can only be done by a pharmacist" you may be saying.

And you would be wrong:

Another legality issue that arose during my time there was the issue of transfers. Each day, management would designate 1 or 2 pharmacists to do incoming transfers. Those pharmacists would not take incoming phone calls during their shifts. They would just call competitors for prescription transfers. Even still, there were so many transfer requests that they were always behind. To remedy this situation, management came up with the idea of having technicians call to get transfers, recording the phone call, and then having a pharmacist listen to the call and compare it to what was written up for accuracy. This program was eventually scrapped because there were not many of the call center pharmacists who were willing to participate. Also, many of the pharmacists for the competitors called the Board to complain about it. Much like the other legal issue, the reason that this issue even arose was a result of non-pharmacist management's desperate attempts to save money any way possible. They did not want to pay pharmacists to be monitoring the specialists' phone calls (because then those pharmacists would not be taking incoming phone calls themselves), and they did not want to use more pharmacists to do the prescription transfers (because then that would take too many pharmacists away from answering calls). They did not care what laws they broke in their quest to save money.

I'll repeat that last line again, in case you were just skimming that last paragraph:

"They did not care what laws they broke in their quest to save money."

Except I'm sure Deep Pill really meant "In their quest to give pharmacists more time to do medication therapy management"

And finally, this is who is deciding the future of your profession:

There are some pharmacists in upper management at POWER; however, the vast majority of management are not pharmacists, and, in fact, they have never even worked in a pharmacy. For example, the senior group manager to whom I alluded earlier was a call center manager at Sprint.

So they can't even sell out the future of pharmacy to managers of GOOD businesses. I'm sure it's not news to most of you that Sprint sucks.

Generally speaking, the non-pharmacist management there treated the business as if we were selling aluminum siding rather than drugs. I have seen other companies start to emulate Walgreens' POWER model, and I would like to see POWER have its plug pulled by the Board of Pharmacy so that this disease does not infect the entire pharmacy world.

So would I Deep Pill.....so would I.

And so should you. If you give a crap about the potential poisons you put in your body.

I am not hopeful however. God help us all.

"No Excuses" Said The Pharmacy District Manager, "Tomorrow You Will Meet Your Flu Shot Quota Or There Will Be Consequences"


Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Walgreen's Puts One Vision Of Pharmacy's Future In The Nation's Newspaper Of Record, But Seems To Be Awful Quiet About The One It's Actually Been Working On.


Here's the shiny, happy vision of pharmacy's future, courtesy of The New York Times:

As the Walgreen Company pushes its army of pharmacists into the role of medical care provider, it is bringing them out from their decades-old post behind the pharmacy counter and onto the sales floor. 
The pharmacy chain, based in Deerfield, Ill., and the nation’s largest, has renovated 20 stores in the Chicago area and is converting more than 40 in Indianapolis to get the pharmacist closer to patients. Pharmacists in the revamped stores are being kept away from the telephone, where dealing with insurance coverage questions and other administrative tasks occupy 25 percent of their time, Walgreen says. 
“What we are seeing now is pharmacists should be using their knowledge to help consumers manage their medications appropriately,” said Nimesh Jhaveri, executive director of pharmacy and health care experience at Walgreen. “It’s not about the product but the care we give.”

Wow, that's almost enough to get me all choked up and misty eyed. Things are going to get better. Really. Walgreen's says so.

"I am a pharmacist who is under the most stress of my career trying to keep my position under this new program. We have 11 or less seconds to review an Rx for data accuracy ... and less than 8 seconds to review it clinically for interactions and dosings. They are actually riding us now to do clinical in 4 seconds [as of] our last meeting. Do you know how hard it is to look up a drug/dosing in 4 seconds? If we do not accomplish this timing, our 'metrics' are out the door ... We are put on level 1 discipline, then level 2, then we are given a 'life line' to find another position."

Huh? What? How did that get in here? Oh for the love of God, that's only an actual letter from an actual Walgreen's pharmacist that showed up in my mailbox awhile back. The "new program" he's talking about isn't the PR stunt that the Times wrote about, but a vision of Pharmacy's future Walgreen's is much further along in implementing it calls the POWER program. The idea is to move as much work away from the store level as possible, using things like off-site central fill centers to deliver refills to the store, call centers to take calls from patients, and splitting the prescription filling process into individual, repetitive tasks to be assingned to workers off site. The pharmacist above had the job of verifying the accuracy of prescription images sent to his home computer.

"The goal of the program is to relieve in-store pharmacists of certain tasks in order to give them more time to offer medication therapy management services." Walgreens told Drug Topics when POWER rolled out. Which sounds an awful lot like the bullshit they were sending the New York Times' way. Let's see how that's working out:

I just wanted to add a comment in regards to Walgreens POWER.  I received my first average (usually always above average or exceeds expectations) performance evaluation because I was going against policy and checking hardcopies (that were typed and verified by POWER) before dispensing medications to patients. I was told not to double check hard copies and to only check product. 

But.......but.......the future pf pharmacy isn't about the product. That's what Walgreens said.

By double-checking hard copies, I caught several mistakes a day.  These mistakes I documented.  At my high volume store, my near misses went from around 20 a month, to over 100 a month.  One specific prescription that I discovered was incorrect due to my double checking of hard copies was a prescription for a child for morphine sulfate written as 20mg/5ml to dispense 1 teaspoonful every 6 hours as needed.  The prescription was typed and verified as 20mg/1ml to dispense 1 teaspoonful every 6 hours as needed.  In a child, this could have been deadly.

Even more deadly than the cigarettes Walgreens sued the city of San Francisco for the right to sell. Nothing says it's all about the care you give more than fighting for the right to profit from poison.

That quote was from a different pharmacist than the first by the way. I got quite a few:

I am writing to you in response to the letter you received from the Walgreens pharmacist who worked at POWER 
I too was one of the pharmacists working in the stressful environment that he talks about... 
...My "numbers" rarely came in where they were supposed to because I actually read the prescriptions, checked for interactions, looked at refill history, etc. So on my weekly phone call from my supervisor, who was a pharmacy technician, I would be reprimanded and told to go faster.  I was verifying upwards of 1000 Rx's per 8 hour shift.  The "fast" employees were verifying about 5000. (emphasis mine)

I'll stop here and point out that's 625 prescriptions per hour. Or ten a minute. Every minute. All day long.

The Andersonville neighborhood store includes a 50-square-foot room behind sliding doors where a pharmacist, James Wu, can sit and counsel patients, who sit on a padded bench that has enough room for the patient and a family member or two. Mr. Wu’s desk is steps to the right of the private room.

Wait. I'm sorry. I've got all my notes and papers mixed up here and I keep getting Walgreen's versions of Pharmacy's future mixed up. I think that was the bullshit one.

They were also going to enroll me in a class that taught me "what to skip over when verifying prescriptions"

Well they did say it wasn't about the product anymore.

Mr. Wu said he could now spend more time talking to patients or out in the store aisles, and rarely is distracted now by the orders being placed for prescriptions. 
POWER pharmacists are stuck at a computer terminal situated between the Consultation Window and 2-3 cash registers (plus drive-thru). There's absolutely no peace or privacy; the potential distractions are incalculable, and their mere likelihood itself soon becomes a distraction in-lieu. RPh's no longer have their own personal terminal; they share the register computer with the Technicians, Interns, cross-trainers, Store Managers- basically, anyone who wanders through the pharmacy can enter data under the pretense of the RPh's initials.

Mr. Wu didn't say that second paragraph. A Walgreen's pharmacist actually working in the Walgreens of the future said that second paragraph. I could go on, but you get the picture. The reports I'm getting from the real world are nothing like the blowjob that New York Times reporter gave the nation's largest drug chain.

But wait my friends, because as they say in the advertising world, it gets better. One Walgreen's POWER pharmacist wrote me not long ago and gave me the complete scoop on what this program is like. The ups and downs, ins and outs, and all the dirty laundry of this initiative undertaken by the Pharmacy America Trusts™ to shape the profession's future.  Those of you not in pharmacy will likely be shocked. Those of you in the profession most likely will just be saddened. You'll have to wait until I get the time to get the next post up, but I'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve a 50-square-foot room behind sliding doors where a pharmacist can sit and counsel patients.

Stay tuned.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Darvocet And Dulcolax Are Interchangeable For The Right Patient.

I can't claim credit for that headline. it came from an alert reader who tipped me off to this story from the website of WSB-TV:

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — Investigators are looking for a burglar who has hit a Johns Creek pharmacy twice in the past three months. 
Back in July someone broke into the business and got away with Adderall, Oxycodone and thousands of other pills. The store's surveillance cameras captured that crime... 
Now police believe the same man may be responsible for both crimes. 
"From the footage of the video from both of the incidents, we're pretty sure it's the same individual," 
But this time around the pharmacist outsmarted the burglar. According to a police report, the pill bottles taken were filled with candy and laxatives.

Reached in a fictional headquarters less opulent than the new building his organization can't stop bragging about, American Pharmacists Association President Marialice S. Bennett praised the "outside the box" thinking "in improving medication use and advancing patient care"

"This pharmacist obviously realized that a person ingesting a large quantity of narcotics, as this burglar or his customers were evidently doing,  is at risk of severe constipation, and took measures to address the needs of his community, extending the same quality of care provided to the law abiding to those on the other side of the law. I'd like to think of this event as the culmination of a lot of effort and hard work here at APhA, as we have been advocating various medication therapy management schemes while standing idly by as pharmacists get ripped off in business transactions for almost two decades now. Bravo Health Mart Pharmacy of John's Creek Geogia, bravo!"

Pharmaceutical Benefits Manager MedcoHealth Solutions Inc., acting on the possibility that the alleged burglar was one of its cardholders, immediately imposed a $10,000 fine against the pharmacy for not having a hard copy prescription for the candy and laxatives on file.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Why Do People Call Them Teabaggers? For No Other Reason Than To Insult Them With A Sexual Innuendo, Obviously.

From today's New York Times:
It's hard to ridicule people who do such a good job of it themselves.....

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

I Suppose It Would Be Rather Horrifying To Look At Your Baby And Discover An Ass Problem.

I wouldn't know, as I don't have any. Babies that is. We'll leave any ass problems I may or may not have out of this for now.

But like I was saying, I've heard  the love between a parent and infant is unlike any bond in the human experience, which totally makes sense. Evolution would have to create a pretty damn strong bond after all to withstand the noisy, smelly, mess making, mess getting into, sleep depriving experience that is parenthood. I've worked in a retail setting for close to 25 years now, which means I now see  babies who could be the babies of the first little shits I saw wailing down the toy aisle long ago, and I am convinced. To put up with one of those things you would have to love them. A lot.

I bet the people at Stiefel Laboratories understand that as well. That a few of them are even parents, and that on occasion, they have experienced the unique horror that must come from seeing the child you love so much with its ass on fire. I'm talking about diaper rash, and I'm not trying to minimize the condition. I'm sure it's awful for a little guy or girl to have to go through. I'm also sure that the first reaction of most parents would be something along the lines of "I NEED TO DO SOMETHING!!!!!" That the sight of such suffering, along with a tinge of guilt that would come from thinking maybe they had had something to do with this, "Did I change the diapers enough? Was I not diligent enough with the baby powder?" Would spur a parent to do anything in their power to make things right again.

That's how most parents would think that is. The parents who work at Stiefel Laboratories evidently thought something along the lines of "We could make some money off of this. A literal shitload of money" Which would explain the creation of Vusion ointment. A product I am nominating this night as the biggest rip off piece of shit ever to grace a pharmacy shelf.

It's not that Vusion is ineffective. It never would have been approved unless there was evidence that it worked. The product's package insert lists three ingredients; miconazole, zinc oxide, and white petrolatum.

Miconazole is an anti-fungal agent used to treat secondary yeast infections that can take hold during an episode of diaper rash. It's good stuff to use in these situations, and Vusion contains it in a concentration of 0.25%

Thing is, you can buy an over the counter tube of miconazole , eight times as strong, in the athlete's foot aisle. It goes by the name of Micatin.

Zinc Oxide is a skin protectant that also helps to seal out moisture. Again, a great idea to use when skin is irritated and wet. You'll get it in a concentration of 15% in Vusion. Or you could get some over the counter Desitin and get it in a concentration of 40%.

The audacity to list white petrolatum as an active ingredient is my favorite. White Petrolatum is Vaseline.

So, let's recap. Vusion is a prescription product that contains a combination of ingredients in weaker strengths than you can find them over the counter. Now let's do some math:

One tube Micatin, 14grams-  $6.49 (all prices from drugstore.com)

One tube Desitin, 120 grams, $4.42

Vaseline, 75 grams $3.29

Which gives us a grand total of $14.20.

So, how much do you suppose a prescription of Vusion goes for, after you go through the process of being examined by a licensed prescriber and given the right to buy something not as strong? Guess. Seriously...before you read any farther, I want you to take a stab at how much you think the good folks at Stiefel laboratories will charge you for watered down over the counter products.

Ready?

$265.99 for a 50 gram tube. I am not making that up. It's almost enough to make me slightly sympathetic towards insurance companies.

So by all means, the next time you gasp in horror when you realize your little one's ass is in an awful way, ask your doctor if Vusion is right for you, and if your doctor says yes......

Find another doctor.


Saturday, October 08, 2011

I Make A Vow To You This Night. As Surely As I See This Glass Of Absinthe Before Me, I Will Dedicate The Rest Of My Life To Work Worthy Of The Nobel Peace Prize.

An open letter to the people of South Africa,

Comrades,

It may seem odd that I, a common citizen of the United States who has set foot outside of my country only four times, would make an appeal to you, a nation halfway around the world and seemingly far more politically complex than anything I have ever witnessed. I ask only that you hear me out however, as my humble plea to you may just end up benefiting us all.

For you see, the demon seed of apartheid, planted so long ago and so far away from me, has sprouted into a flower of fire that threatens to burn out of control. Consuming my own house the way it has burned through so much of your country. I understand your problem with the white Afrikaners in a way that no one else who is not black can. They came uninvited, assumed all positions of power and went on to rule with an iron fist, tolerating no questions, much less actual opposition. First in South Africa, then with my employer. Because when you freed yourself , you chased many of your oppressors directly into the corporate suites above me, subjecting me to the very woes you once endured. By liberating yourselves,  you set up my own enslavement. I suppose it is only karmic. I was a Republican during the time Reagan was propping up the regime that held you down. I am truly, deeply, sorry.

Did they do weird shit with the trash when they were in charge of your country? The trash system they have set up in my company is truly bizarre. Did they dismiss your ideas out of hand only to implement them months later and give you no credit? Did they tell you you did not know how to do simple arithmetic when you pointed out you did 75% of a store's prescriptions?  I can only imagine what it would be like to live in a land where those people were the only ones with guns. Look into my face my African brothers, and you will see the pain of a modern Nelson Mandela.

Which is why I am writing to you this night. Because like my brother Madiba, I choose not to fight the power of  injustice with force, but with the power of peace. From this moment on, I will not rest until you have settled your differences with the Boers and they can go the fuck back to where they came fr........I mean....they can return to their homeland secure in the knowledge you no longer want revenge for the fact they used to beat your head in and make you go to the shittiest beaches. I am in a unique position here my friends, as I both know what it is like to live under their heel and am pretty sure they will never call me a kaffir. Let us sit at the table of reconciliation and let me help you work together in the common interests of humanity.

As long as that table is in your country, and not mine. Before they conscript me to do off-site flu shot clinics, please, let's see if you guys can work this out.


Tuesday, October 04, 2011

We Have Finally Reached A Bipartisan Consensus In Washington. Now All We Need Is A Time Machine.

So the words of yesterday's right wing whack job can get someone branded a flaming socialist today. I can only shudder at the thought of what tomorrow will bring:


Monday, October 03, 2011

A Question About A Question.

My world could not be more unlike that of the Norteños or the Sureños and their ilk. I don't have to worry that picking out what color clothes to wear in the morning might be a life or death decision. I do have to be concerned that if my peers find out I eat non-organic bananas for lunch I will lose status in my community. I think about drive-thrus far more than drive-bys, and I'm pretty sure I'll never have to shank or be shanked. I do live close enough to the gangster world, at lease physically, that news of it often appears in my local paper. The accounts usually start off sounding something like this:

 "Blue dude saw a red dude and asked him a gang related question....."

I'm not making this up, they oftentimes refer to this "gang related question"

What could it be? This question. Do they mean there's like a quiz? Really? And I thought I was under a lot of pressure what I took the pharmacy boards. At least no one was sitting there waiting to bust a cap in my ass.....

OK, seriously. What the hell is this question the gangsters ask each other. This is bugging the shit out of me.