The Gel From Hell And Other "Cures"

We ran out of room in our recent Pet Peeves coverage and saved the best or maybe worst for later, which is now.

If you've filled a prescription, read a magazine, or watched any TV lately, you will have noticed that many, if not all, prescription drugs offer the distinct possibility for you to graduate from a mildly annoying problem to something far, far worse.

We offer these three examples of medical, pharmaceutical, and legal lunacy:

1. ACTOS "has been shown to lower blood sugar without increasing your risk of having a heart attack or stroke" for adults with Type 2 diabetes. Now, that's certainly a comforting newspaper-ad headline. It continues in smaller print, "....while ACTOS was not shown to reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke, it also did not increase the risk of heart attack or stroke." Huh?

Here's the catch:  "ACTOS can cause new or worsen heart failure" in certain people. Oh well, I guess that's okay. It can also cause low blood sugar, flulike symptoms, anemia, weight gain. It can increase your chance of becoming pregnant (presumably only for female patients).

One more clincher: "Some people, particularly women, are at higher risk of having bone fractures while taking ACTOS." Shall we call it "FRACTOS?"

Our advice: get a new physician, who will just put you on a diet.

2. Endo Story: An orthopedist prescribed Voltaren Gel for me last week as part of a program designed to heal my tennis elbow. Voltaren came with a four-page pamphlet composed in very fine print, which reads like an encyclopedia of bad things Voltaren might do to you.

"WARNING: Cardiovascular and Gastrointestinal Risk." That has a rather scary ring to it, doesn't it?
Voltaren may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events....and stroke, which can be fatal." Use this to get rid of my tennis elbow? I don't think so!

"V" may also cause gastro- "bleeding, ulceration, perforation of the stomach...." Please, are we kidding? It's a wonder that my new orthopedist and my trusty old druggist haven't been carted off to prison for recommending this gel from hell. Why would anyone risk trading a tennis elbow for a "myocardial infarction" or just a plain vanilla infarction? Does insurance cover this stuff on the theory that it's cheaper to kill you now with infarction, rather than to risk allowing your tennis elbow to continue through years of therapy?

When I brought this gel-lopy home and showed it to my Darling Girl, she told me that she already had a tube of Voltaren left over from a bad knee. You may recall that DG actually did have a heart attack recently. Can someone recommend one of those lawyers with an 800 Number? Where's John Edwards, when you need him? Best not to ask.

The name of the company that makes Voltaren is....Endo. Not making it up.


3. "What is the most important information I should know about BOTOX?" Well, for one, "it can cause serious side effects that can be life threatening."

Surely getting rid of frown lines is worth having severe "Problems swallowing, speaking, or breathing," isn't it? No wonder those mad Real Housewives From Everywhere are having big problems!

They also risk: muscle weakness all over the body, double vision, loss of voice, loss of bladder control.

Cougars wearing thongs by Depends? Now, there's a concept.

Using BOTOX "could be unsafe for you to drive a car," which explains why so many people who use it seem to have chauffeured limousines.

Our advice: learn to love a good frown now and then.

And we were worried about Greece and Portugal. Take two aspirin; you can even read the label.

The Endo.

"No Problem" Is A Huge Problem And Other Pet Peeves

You've just begun your meal in a restaurant. Your waitress walks by and asks if everything is okay. You reply, "Yes, thank you."

"No problem," she responds.

You thank the college administrator for translating tuition payment instructions, which you thought had been written in a  Martian dialect.

"No problem," he says.

You thank your brand-new server at your beach club for (finally) delivering your meal. "No problem," he says.

Let's be very, very clear about this: saying "No Problem," when what you really should be saying is "You're Welcome" is a very BIG PROBLEM.

People of any age should not be even remotely thinking that performing a service for others, especially paying customers, might be some kind of problem. There is no problem, can be no problem, for eons there was no mention of a possible problem. Why is there a problem now?

Is this related to the phenomenon of having to accept "aks" for "ask?" Or, is it connected to young men and women habitually saying "And he was like and then I was like and then he was like," when they mean, "I said this, then he said that, and then I said....to describe some silly conversation?"

We don't know. We don't care. Stop with the "No Problem."

You're Welcome.



    
                                                _________________________________

How should we know when a driver ahead of us is going to make a left turn? He/she engages an ingenious device located on the steering-wheel column, called a left hand turn signal. Amazingly, there is one for a right turn as well.

You do not believe me? I feel your pain.

These days, when you're driving up 95 to take advantage of that huge sale on kumquat seeds at Whole Foods, you seldom see the vehicle in front of you using turn signals. It happens in town too. If you follow a Mercedes, anecdotal evidence indicates: no chance. Apparently there are no words in the German language for "turn signals."

Maybe we've stopped using the signals due to current vehicle design, which  complicates matters by making what used to be only turn signal arms into multi-functional devices. Trust us, even though you can operate Cruise Control or the nineteen window-wiper speeds from these arms, there really are actual, operational turn-signals there.

They are just like the ones you HAD to use in order to get your license. Except that you no longer bother using them. If you think this is really No Problem, you are wrong. Please be courteous and safe: use both the right and the left.

You're Welcome.
                                   _________________________________________

You enter an elevator, headed to that important interview or presentation. You want to take these last few ascending moments to mentally prepare your pitch.

Suddenly, your concentration is broken, when you notice fellow elevatorians staring at the screen, as if they are actors in some sci-fi movie about aliens abducting humans in elevators.

Do you really need to know what the Dow is doing every minute? Do you really need to know what the dippy BP, Goldman, or GM CEO just said? Are you craving just one more look at Lindsay Lohan's headlong career/life nosedive?

No. You also do not need 24-hour TV in taxis, banks, airports, delis,
nail salons, or funeral homes.

We cannot find much decent programming on TV to watch in our home (okay, we're suckers for The Mentalist, MI-5, Masterpiece Mystery, Yankee Games). Why do some folks, who like to act like aliens, think we need crazy housewives from Topeka EVERYWHERE we go.

We must stop doing this to ourselves.

                                        __________________________________

We offer these improvements as a Public Service. We hope you are grateful, but for those who are not....
No Problem.

Slow! Parents Playing

I sat in the path of a sea-breeze by the tennis courts Friday as a very fine young tennis pro worked with three boys, aged ten or eleven.

One boy's father, an "A" club-player, stood close-by intensely watching his son's performance, earplugs hanging down his neck.  After each of his son's shots, he made comments to the boy based on his own play standards.

Soon, mom, also an "A" club-player, joined dad on the deck overlooking the court and began offering her own comments. Then they discussed his racquet and grip, which were all wrong apparently (sorry). Eventually, she migrated to the other end of the court to get a different angle.

The boy didn't have a chance; he'd been tag-teamed. He could not enjoy an uninterrupted moment playing with his friends and the hired instructor. We can predict that the boy will develop into a very good player, perhaps college material, and, later, an "A"club-player. But, perhaps we can also predict that it won't be much fun along the way, and that he might return the favor by judging his parents every move with their own intense set of standards.

It may not be pretty.

The previous evening, up the road in Greenwich CT, LeBron announced "The Decision." The Times referred to Greenwich as " a small Connecticut town." Yes, and London is a village by a river and Wilt Chamberlain was a wallflower with the ladies.

The whole world seemed to be riveted by The Decision, as if we had all become collective parents at both ends of the court. Not to mention Judge and Jury.

New Yorkers are expert at fleeing to Miami, so why all the fuss, unless you really care about the woebegone Knicks? Cleveland-ers usually prefer Florida's west coast: the Uber-Clevelander George Steinbrenner comes to mind. But, LeBron just doesn't seem to fit Naples, Tampa, or Clearwater.

It took less than 24 hours for collective/adoptive parents, who do not live near Miami, to offer up their verdicts:

Ungrateful and Disloyal!
Played Us for Fools!
Insulting To Our Great City!
Bamboozled!

Please. And those comments were just from adults.

Dear LeBron, you don't owe them a thing. You're a hard-working, successful young man (the guy is 25 years old). You carried two cities on your shoulders: Akron and Cleveland. You and a handful of young men like you carry a tired NBA product. You may not have known your father, but your mother has been your biggest supporter and fan. Now, you have about 100 million expectant parents, who want a little piece of your jersey, your number, your sweat and your soul.

Forget them. Go where you want to go. But, remember, sometimes you get what you ask for. Your friends and new "family" may have unrealistic expectations of what you can do for their lives. You know better than anyone just how poorly many of these NBA teams play; why do people pay to watch this stuff anyway?

Competition is essential to life (see Darwin, Charles and Smith, Adam), but so is fun (see Python, Monty and Murray, Bill). When one becomes unbalanced at the expense of the other, we get obsessive and then we get into trouble.




Ed note: This post is dedicated to the memory of Alana Dupont and to her family: husband Peter and daughters Lily, Daisy and Charlotte, who, together with Alana's friends, celebrate her life each year by competing in and enjoying a tennis tournament. Alana was a tenacious and dedicated athlete, a gifted and inspired artist, and a generous spirit. She knew how to enjoy it all, while competing hard.

Ringo At 70, A Brief Tribute

1. Ringo Starr turned 70 this week.

If you don't know who Ringo Starr is, or think he was a Special Prosecutor, please turn back now. If you think 70 is old, get a life, and your subscription is suspended.

2. We went into the ThirdGarage Collected Works Vault to retrieve this tribute to Ringo & Friends we penned a while ago:


Across The Universe


We sing our song.

Big, small

Short, long

Fast, crawl.

We sing their song.

Dong, ding

Ding, dong
Along we sing.

We wait for our song.

Like Paul,

Like John,

It won’t be long.

Singing our song.


copyright/2009/rareburghers                                      

- Well, perhaps this is why we turned to blog-prose.


3.


Millions of people can remember Ringo and his mates playing Shea Stadium in '65, but few remember the concerts we attended on August 29 and 30, 1964 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium:

http://www.rarebeatles.com/photopg7/fh82964.htm


And....


http://www.beatlesbible.com/1964/08/28/live-forest-hills-tennis-stadium-new-york/

4. 
Happy Birthday, Ringo. In our hyped-up world, you and your friends were, are, and will always be The Real Real Thing.

Too Small To Fail: A Very Slow Boat To China

We can read in today's Times about one Scott, a recent Colgate grad, who has been struggling to find a job and get his "career" started. He was offered a $40K Associate Claims Adjuster job at Hanover Insurance Company in Worcester, MA, close to his home. Admittedly, Worcester is not exactly Paris or Singapore (Disclosure: your correspondent was born and resided in Worcester for two weeks; later, he attended college there, sort of).  Still. Some of you may be more than mildly surprised to find that Scott turned down the offer, since it did not match his career ambitions.

Poor Hanover! They are about to get 5,000 or 10,000, or even 30,000 inquiries about that position, which probably already went to someone who recognized it as an honorable way to make a living, even if only for a couple of years.

It happens that I am a loyal customer of Hanover Insurance Company: a very happy customer as a matter of fact. Hanover settled two large claims for me and assisted on another small one during the last few years. I, for one, am really happy that my Claims Adjusters were smart, courteous, caring and totally professional, both in Worcester and in Syracuse, NY.

Scott, thank you for rejecting that offer. You sound like someone who is so concerned about your  own career that you would not have much empathy for customers like me. I would, most likely, be a big inconvenience during your meteoric straight-line rise to the C-suite.

Scott's grandfather opines that the young man should "go West," by which he means to Asia. My advice would be to take the proverbial Slow Boat To China, on which, with any luck, he can take that seminar in Humility that he so obviously missed back at dear old shiny-bright Colgate. Or, maybe they don't bother with teaching that junk anymore.

Scott, if  you  complete that seminar, arrive "West," which really is East, and find another enterprise worthy of your talents, you will very likely find people called employees, colleagues, customers, and suppliers. Many of those folks may perform duties similar to being an Associate Claims Adjuster.

Amazingly, they may even find honor, satisfaction, and prosperity in those jobs. They will help and respect others who treat them with respect and empathize with their problems. Many of them will be promoted and earn positions of responsibility exactly because they exhibited those valuable traits.

If you should skip that Slow Boat seminar, Scott,  and somehow find yourself in an enterprise you think might match your current ambitions, we offer a caution, if the name on the door is AIG or GM. Thousands of careerists have already been there.

And gone.

Ed Note: Full Times' story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/business/economy/07generation.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Good To Have A Back-Up Plan

July 4th Weekend has arrived and with it, early summer doldrums.

We speak not only of the lack of an evening breeze while we sip a drink on the porch, but of the apparent stillness all around us, as if we have collectively been holding our breaths, waiting for the next ....what exactly? Cataclysmic event? Dow at 8,000 ? Yet another dippy CEO? Clean pelicans?

Are we waiting for a Congressional hearing on all of this....Waiting?

All around us people are saying, "Don't worry, nobody can ever find a job in the summer." Or, "Don't worry, nobody buys houses in the summer." Really? Apparently it's true: our culture and healing economy are so advanced that we can afford to just take the entire summer off: shut down until mid-September.

At least that's what we used to do. Then, in the fall, we would resume hiring, buying and selling until the end of November, when, naturally, we would shut down until mid-January. But, these days it seems as though we have gotten permanently tentative about doing business with one another.

If you have been looking for a job or selling a house, you may have wondered lately, "Is this any way to run an economy?" You may have also wondered, "Do the Chinese simply shut down for weeks and months at a time?"

"Not exactly," as our occasional Thirdgarage colleague "8-Ball" might say.

This summer feels different so far, doesn't it? There really does seem to be an eerie stillness around us. Where we live and write, only the local coyote population seems to have gotten off-message, and we didn't even know there was a local coyote population. Dear Wile E & Friends, Warning! You have severely ticked off the local real estate agent community, which was already pretty severely upset.

Advice: get hired elsewhere or move to a new neighborhood pronto, like in Idaho.

But, where were we? Oh yes, being tentative. It's okay to be wary of corporations, when they've given people good reason to do so. It's okay to be somewhat wary of government, particularly of the whacky accounting used by state government. But, when we lose Trust in each other, that's trouble. We proudly celebrate Independence Day, but the truth is that our hard-won political independence implies the we are dependent on each other for a certain amount of trust. Otherwise, the "system" Talking Heads with over-heated employment contracts love/hate really does bog down.

Here's a modest July 4th proposal; we might think of it as our Dependence Day suggestion: Our culture has a saying and we put it right smack on our money; "In God We Trust." We can argue the constitutionality of that, but who cares? Our problems stem from a lack of Trust in....Us.

Let's change our currency to read: "In God And One Another We Trust"

Good to have a back-up plan.

Guaranteed Cures For Insomniacs!

Lately, without even trying, like Columbus, we've discovered a whole new world of ways to be put to sleep. In our case, it has been at the wrong hour; however, carefully managed, the following are absolutely guaranteed to put you to sleep in a matter of minutes at the proper time:

World Cup Soccer: Do not worry that these games, featuring overpaid men chasing a ball around a lawn are scheduled for ninety minutes, plus "extra" time, often with an add-on half-hour "third-half." You will fall asleep after less than 10% of the game has been played! Just the thought of these guys running and walking around all day to produce a thrilling 0-0 tie might put you to sleep. Plus, they include a free loud soundtrack that is very much like the loud buzzing sound of those mosquitos in your bunk at night back at that awful soccer camp your parents made you attend for getting such poor grades. Curiously, this incessant buzzing now has a strange hypnotic effect. Vuvuzzzzzzzela.

Wimbledon: In 2006, celebrating a 50 year love affair with lawn tennis and its aesthetically pleasing serve and volley style, we visited Wimbledon for the first time. We were initially thrilled by the idea of actually being at what was once the center of a vibrant lawn tennis world. But, we soon found that it wasn't just jet- lag that was making us weary.

All of the players stood at the baseline, pounding and grunting away, trying to hit the ball through an opponent with precisely the same style at the other baseline. Both baselines had turned into a light brown dust, while up the center and to the right and left of the net, the grass was so fresh and green, it appeared to have had an electric fence around it. Wimbledon has become such a corporate game, devoid of any artistry as performed by Althea Gibson, Lew Hoad, and many many more (okay, Federer is an exception, but even he is afraid of the net). They have taken all the risk, the whimsy, the real athleticism out of the game, so that the players treat the courts as if they had been painted on a parking lot. The Longest game in history? Please. But, you will have The Longest Snooze.

The NBA: We watched about five minutes of the sixth game of the "Finals" between the Celtics and the Lakers. Holy Sleep-Eze, how bad were the other teams! As with Wimbledon, this has become the ultimate corporate game: the point is to get to tell people you were there with Jack or Dustin, as a corporate guest, of course.

These guys can't shoot; they do not like to play defense (why should they when the opponent can't shoot); they foul on every play, and some even get called; who cares, they can't shoot foul shots. This game is kept alive by tax breaks for building local coliseums, for the "corporations" that buy the tickets, food and beverages, and, most likely, for the owners foolish enough to toss away part of their fortunes and the players themselves. You will be in dreamy land before the first field goal from 10 feet or more goes through the hoop. Bill Russell and friends would have trounced all of these guys for far less dough. Swizzzzzzzzzh.

Major League Baseball: We believe that any one of the recommendations above will put you to sleep, but, if for some reason they should fail, here is the grandaddy of them all: the nearly 4-hour baseball game. As with soccer, don't worry, you will be snoozing long before the umpire, players, pitchers and catchers figure out tonight's strike zone.

What can you say about a game that now considers the Walk to be an exciting play? What can you say about announcers who ecstatically call a 14 pitch, 10 foul ball performance a "great at bat?" What can you say about a World Series game that begins on an chilly October evening and ends on a frigid November morning. Sleep is what you can say! You could watch the first couple of innings, switch to the MI-5 and Mentalist shows you recorded, then still catch the the last two innings; except that you will be dreaming away long before that. We guaranzzzzee it.

We also note:
....Watching the Elena Kagan Hearings.... Apparently, they think she may be the most exciting Justice. Oy. Her answers are as non-comittal as our friend Eight Ball's.... Rating: 8.0 Z's.
....Reading about the exploits of the newly arrested Russian Spy Ring.... read about their recipes for BBQ sauce, their secrets of coaching youth soccer (see World Cup above), and how the FBI almost missed them, because they actually never gathered any secrets. Rating: 8.5 Z's. Trial rating 10.0 Z's.
....Waiting for LeBron to make up his mind....The mere thought that New Yorkers or even Brooklynites think LeBron will make a huge difference in the city will put you out. If you doubt this, read "NBA" above....Rating:  9.0 Z's