Maybe he should re-think this comment

So in one of my last Media & Communication class, we watched the movie “Big Bucks, Big Pharma,” an expose of the unscrupulous marketing tactics of pharmaceutical companies. We learned that many companies release copycat drugs or slightly different versions of older drugs to gain new patents or to recapture the market after their drug goes generic. There were dozens of ways that the companies jacked up the prices of medicines, and few seemed directly related to the high cost of developing brand-new drugs.

It was the claim that some pharma companies either exaggerate minor symptoms to push a pill to fix it, or suggest illnesses that send people in swarms to their doctors, that really captured the attention of the class. Like good students, they followed the teacher’s lead in deploring these practices and coming up with their own examples of pharma foul play.

“It’s like Restless Leg Syndrome, what is that?” said one girl. “If your legs are restless just get up and walk.”

“They give Ritalin to anybody these days. My little cousin is only six and they claim he’s OCD, wait, what is it? ADD. All he really is, is annoying. Maybe they should just give him a spanking.”

“Yeah, they give anti-depressants to everyone too. Like I just saw this commercial? It said something like if you’re unhappy with your life or don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere, you want to feel better about yourself, take this pill.” The guy shook his head. “Like, why not just take heroin or meth?”

Um, like, I can think of a couple of reasons why not. It’s like, police and bad side effects, and death, and stuff.

Was this really necessary?

I’ve mentioned before that literary folks can sometimes be a little pretentious, and maybe it’s true that we’ve read books we’re “supposed” to read and then say we loved it when we didn’t. Because if everyone else thinks a Great Novel is amazing, then you’re the Short Bus Kid if you didn’t like it.

I’m calling bullshit on this. I am never going to like the novels of Virginia Woolfe and probably will never fully understand James Joyce. Furthermore, I don’t want to. I know everyone is all obsessed with Jane Austin, but the hours I’ve spent on her novels (as required reading) are hours I’m really going to wish I had when I’m on a morphine drip on my deathbed saying goodbye to great-grandchildren I might never get to have.

So, while I’m keeping track of my reading over on Goodreads, I occasionally let out an honest but brief review, such as the one I just wrote for “On the Road”, by Jack Kerouac. Let me be clear that this represents ONLY MY OPINION, okay?

” Self-indulgent, selfish druggies on a road trip…yawn. I could have stayed home and saw that. No big insights or meanings here.”

I know there are people who think this is a deep meaningful exploration of something or other, and one of them found me. Not only found me, but was so deeply wounded that he had to leave the following comment.

“Matt: wow someone clearly missed the enitre point. And kerouac wasn’t a druggie, he was an alcoholic…I think perhaps this book was a little beyond your intelligence quotient.”

Pause. Reload. Second comment.

“Matt: here’s someone who “gets it,” as you clearly didnt….”This book is brilliant. It’s extremely readable, bordering on poetic. It counterposes loneliness and melancholia with colourful characters, incidents and picaresque adventures. With On The Road’s directness and conversational tone, Kerouac practially invented a writing style.”

I don’t know Matt, and I don’t know why, out of the 89,000 people who reviewed this book, he chose my review to blast with a turd-bomb of hate. I think if I’d read the book when I was sixteen, not thirty-five, I might have thought it was brilliant and poetic, but I’ve grown up. As a grown-up, I understand that civilized people disagree with each other while refraining from insulting the other person’s intelligent quotient.

However, I’m glad that in this person Matt’s case, Kerouac found his audience, and I’m also glad to know that there are people in the world who have a higher intelligence quotient than me.

Just calm down!

What is with all the impatience lately? Today I was leaving a parking lot and was stuck between a car backing up and a car coming towards me, waiting for the backer-upper. When the car left, I thought it would make sense for me to drive on and get out of the way.  Silly me.

This lady apparently thought I was stealing her parking spot (of course, it was clearly HERS) and zoomed left into it, while glaring at me and saying something that obviously I couldn’t hear but I’m sure made her feel better. Then she did a series of backwards and forwards to get her minivan into the space. All the while I could see her looking at me and muttering. I’m glad I don’t read lips. I kind of wished she could see me leaving the parking lot, but I guess I don’t need to prove to anyone that I am not a vicious parking space stealer.

Later in another parking lot, I pulled in and waited for a pedestrian to cross, though there was no stop sign. After all it was 22 degrees and snowing, and I was in a heated car. The driver behind me thought this was completely out of line and honked at me to get moving, which I could not do unless I ran over the poor old lady and her shopping cart.

You know how they have those breathalyzers on cars that determine whether or not the driver is sober enough to drive? Someone should invent an angerlyzer to check whether people are calm and patient enough to be behind the wheel. The life you save may be your own.

I didn’t need to know this, and neither do you.

Warning: this post may make you a vegetarian.

My dear sweet Joe grew up on cattle ranches. See this adorable picture of him? He’s walking a steer that weighs at least 1,000 pounds. I think he’s about five years old.

Growing up on a cattle ranch made him grow up early, but it also gave him a lot of fascinating stories. Like how he helped birth little calves and checked for pregnancy by sticking a whole arm inside a cow.

This last bit of Marlboro Man’s life was on my mind when we walked through the cattle barns at the state fair. I knew that there was a lot about cattle ranching that might make a tender greenhorn feel a little dizzy, but suddenly, I needed to know more. Because that’s just how my mind goes.

How far am I gonna go with this story? All the way. So don’t read on unless you really think you’re ready for the birds and the bees and the bulls. I mean it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

_____________________________________________________________

“You said the cows are artificially inseminated?”

“Usually, yeah. You want to make sure they’re inseminated on the right schedule.”

“And this happens how?”

“The bull semen is injected into the cow through a tube.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun for the cow.”

We stroll farther, and a worse thought occurs to me.

“Um, how do they get the semen?”

“From the semen collector.”

My imagination takes a huge, horrible leap forward. After all, I know how semen is collected for human artificial insemination.

“Who gets THAT job? The new guy on the ranch?”

“You usually buy the semen from a distributor, but yes, there is a semen collector.”

At this point I have to know about this subject even though I really don’t want to know. I stop him in the middle of the barn.

“So what…now…um, how exactly does that, um…happen?”

“A lot of times they use an electric prod. They put it in the anus and the bull has an orgasm.”

“They…um…”

“And someone is standing there to collect the semen.”

“Huh.”

We walk on.

“The bulls like that, do they?”

He shrugs.

“It works.”

I never want to put “Bull Semen Collector” on my resume.

So Lake Forest Girl says to Winnetka Girl…

“Gorgeous diamonds!” She takes her hand. “Are you a newlywed?”

I can’t hear Winnetka Girl. We’re all smashed together on the steps of the Metra, so close that my face is in some teen’s armpit, and then the warning blares out, “CAUTION. THE DOORS ARE CLOSING. CAUTION. THE DOORS ARE CLOSING.”

“I know my diamonds!” brags Lake Forest Girl. “They’re always so shiny when you’re first married.”

Winnetka Girl says, “Well, about the time they’re ready for polishing, it’s time for an upgrade anyway, right?”

“And a redesign.” They giggle, and Lake Forest Girl’s husband rolls his eyes.

We had just spent over an hour on the train platform with Lake Forest Girl and her husband, who was furious about a taxi driver who couldn’t find the Ravenswood stop even though he’d been a Chicago driver for 20 years.  Some part of this was her fault, and she tried to jolly him past the topic, but it kept coming up again. They even called other people to talk about the taxi driver and how she shouldn’t have paid him. Twenty bucks was too much.

Lake Forest Guy was also vehement about wanting some pancakes at the Golden Nugget restaurant next to the platform. Something about this was also her fault. She made a joke about it, but her lips remained in a tight line.

I was more interested in her dress than the conversation. She was wearing a halter dress with a pattern that I saw, upon closer inspection, to be large green frogs leaping on and off even greener lilypads. This little sundress probably cost $500 at one of the mahogany and privilege-stained boutiques in her town. Her husband had the neat, colorless, tasteful clothes and the tanned, relaxed face of very wealthy men.

“I love Winnetka,” said Lake Forest Girl. “I just wish it was more affordable.”

“Oh, I love it too. When we got married, I told Saul that I just didn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Winnetka Guy looked at Lake Forest Guy and smirked. “I hope all these teenagers aren’t getting off at my stop. There’s a big house across the street where they’re always having parties.”

I look at Joe. “I am SO blogging this.”

After three or four stations, the crowds had cleared enough that there was room for us in the cars. The Winnetka couple had left; Lake Forest Girl was sitting upstairs alone on a bench for two while her husband sat on the first level.

Joe and I sat across from each other. I took out our old iPod and gave him one of the earbuds. As Fernando Ortega began to sing us to sleep, our fingers twined around each other, and I was so very grateful for the life I have.