THE NANNY STATE
From the annals of "Why the Governement should stay out of our lives", here's my RL latest installment.
My oldest son has that out of control form of acne. This is not your normal teen acne that ProActiv or those topical over-the-counter astringents and even antibiotics can help. So, the family doc writes him a script for Accutane. Now I know all about the warnings about using this very powerful drug, as hubby was on it back in the 80's, a few years into our marriage. The doc gives us the obligatory warnings about the side effects and things we need to do and avoid while on it.
We take the prescription to the pharmacist. She says it can't be filled b/c the doc has to be signed up for some GOVERNMENT PROGRAM where my son has to register before she can legally dispense the drug. She also says this is a NEW PROGRAM and not the one they had in place before that used the yellow stickers. She also adds that if we don't get back to her with some card or # or something we need to procure within 7 DAYS, that the prescription can't be filled-we'll have to get a new prescription written.
So, off we go back to the doc a week later to see if he's registered for this PROGRAM. He says yes, he's been prescribing this medicine...yadda, yadda, yadda. The receptionist goes and gives us a yellow sticker with some numbers on it & has the doc rewrite the script. I try to tell her that no, this sticker thing isn't being used anymore and there is something NEWER and other hoops we have to jump through to get the medicine. She poo poos me and says this is all we need, pats me on the head and sends me off like a good little mindless patient. I guess I really do look like I am a total idiot and don't know anything, but that seems to be the way things are for women here in Pennsyltucky.
And back we go to the pharmacy. I give the clerk the yellow sticker and such and a few seconds later the pharmacist comes back to the counter to tell me what I already know.....this new piece of paper isn't the Golden Ticket that will get me the drugs I seek. I tell her I know it's not right but somebody other than a 'KNOW NOTHING' Patient has to talk to this Doc from On High & tell him he isn't registered for the new Program that the GOVERNMENT REQUIRES the DRs join.
She says she'll call the dr. & again tells me my prescription will self-destruct in 7 days if we don't get the secret pin number or such & we'll have to get another script written. Before she sends me off into limbo to wait for the dr. to be contacted and get his governmental shit together, she hands me the flyer about this GOVERNMENT PROGRAM that we are having to cowtow to....it's called IPLEDGE. ( I wonder if I can plug it into my IPOD?)
So are you ready for the THRUST of this REQUIRED PROGRAM that is causing all this consternation in mine and my son's lives?? The IPLEDGE PROGRAM is basically a program to track and monitor ACCUTANE USERS and protect the DRUG COMPANY from lawsuits if a User becomes PREGNANT while on this drug!
HELLO???
There is a .00000001% chance of my 15 YEAR OLD TEENAGE SON becoming pregnant while taking this drug or any other drug for that matter, n'est pas?
We are having to go through all this crab so he won't get pregnant. How totally LUDICRIOUS and the biggest waste of time as well as Taxpayers' Dollars is this?!!!? And secondly, why is the government spending MY MONEY to protect
the Drug Company from being sued??
The Governemnt has better STOP spending MY MONEY in ludicrious ways and trying to protect me from myself and start thinking about spending their energies and MY OWN MONEY protecting themselves from my wrath!
Whoever thought that giving Power Hungry Clowns access to unlimited wealth and NO ACCOUNTABILITY for THEIR ACTIONS was a GOOD thing had better get a clue that they are DEAD WRONG!
What the world needs is less GOVERNEMENT! PERIOD
Support your local Libertarian Candidates!
sluggy
Monday, May 22, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006
SIZE DOES MATTER
An online friend sent me this link to the "Biggest Slug in The History of the World".
www.cheesy-wotsits.co.uk/bigslug.htm
Perhaps in the U.K. that's stupendous, but obviously they have never experienced the U.S. Pacific Northwest's Banana Slug.
http://www.walnet.org/stanley_woods/slugz/bananaslug.html
And I would dare say, that "I" am the biggest slug around......
sluggy
Thursday, May 18, 2006
FOR SALE-A House With a View
I just realized that I missed an opportunity last Saturday. That was the day of the open house/preview for a Home that is being auctioned off nearby here, in Kingston Township, PA.
That's just outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA for you folks not up on your NEPA geography.
Houses go on the auction block everyday but this house is a tad 'special'. It's the government seized property that belonged to HUGO SELENSKI, our very own home-grown Serial Killer. You know, the guy who shot drug dealers, hacked them up and burned their bodies and when he got caught & sent off to prison, he actually used the old cliche of tying bedsheets together to escape. (They did eventually recapture him.)
If you haven't heard of him, go google it. He was the heartthrob of Local girls at the first of his trials recently.....they showed up with signs and marriage proposals at the courthouse....go figure! Just goes to show you that SOME people in this world don't have anything approaching SENSE!
Anyway, come May 25th, you've got quite the opportunity to own a piece of PA notoriety, as that's the day of the auction. If you can't get to the only other preview being held on May 21st, check out the property here.....
http://www.treas.gov/auctions/customs/olivetroad.html
The house, from the photo in the paper, looks quite spacious, if not a bit dated in style. There's some work that needs doing, like electrical and some interior repairs. I guess Hugo didn't have much time left over for fix-ups after murdering drug dealers.....he'd rather relax with a cold one in front of the plasma tv after a hard day gunning down fellow hoodlums than repairing the drywall in the hall or recaulking the bathtub.
Turns out Hugo was more an outdoor kind of guy around the house....like working on landscaping around the grounds and such. He use to spend alot of his free time on the old homestead around the burn pit....only the rubbish he was burning wasn't the usual kind, but chunks of criminals he had buddies hack up with saws. The newspaper article stated that you can still see the burn pit from the large living room picture window. I'd bet with a little digging you could unearth some bones on the property as the police didn't dig the whole yard up looking for evidence. Use these to set up your own Hugo Museum! Get some poltergeit chasing camera crew into the house to validate your claim that the property is haunted and you've got a real moneymaking venture on your hands and the newest freak show attraction in this part of PA. The Economic Commission of W-B is always welcoming job opportunities and events that bring dollars into the area....maybe you can get some kind of city business grant to get this venture off the ground? I wonder if the Mayor Leighton will 'believe' this to be a good thing for Wilkes-Barre and use it in his "I Believe" campaign.
Auction is May 25th, at 11am sharp........get those bidding paddles & checkbooks out and get in line!
Sluggy
I just realized that I missed an opportunity last Saturday. That was the day of the open house/preview for a Home that is being auctioned off nearby here, in Kingston Township, PA.
That's just outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA for you folks not up on your NEPA geography.
Houses go on the auction block everyday but this house is a tad 'special'. It's the government seized property that belonged to HUGO SELENSKI, our very own home-grown Serial Killer. You know, the guy who shot drug dealers, hacked them up and burned their bodies and when he got caught & sent off to prison, he actually used the old cliche of tying bedsheets together to escape. (They did eventually recapture him.)
If you haven't heard of him, go google it. He was the heartthrob of Local girls at the first of his trials recently.....they showed up with signs and marriage proposals at the courthouse....go figure! Just goes to show you that SOME people in this world don't have anything approaching SENSE!
Anyway, come May 25th, you've got quite the opportunity to own a piece of PA notoriety, as that's the day of the auction. If you can't get to the only other preview being held on May 21st, check out the property here.....
http://www.treas.gov/auctions/customs/olivetroad.html
The house, from the photo in the paper, looks quite spacious, if not a bit dated in style. There's some work that needs doing, like electrical and some interior repairs. I guess Hugo didn't have much time left over for fix-ups after murdering drug dealers.....he'd rather relax with a cold one in front of the plasma tv after a hard day gunning down fellow hoodlums than repairing the drywall in the hall or recaulking the bathtub.
Turns out Hugo was more an outdoor kind of guy around the house....like working on landscaping around the grounds and such. He use to spend alot of his free time on the old homestead around the burn pit....only the rubbish he was burning wasn't the usual kind, but chunks of criminals he had buddies hack up with saws. The newspaper article stated that you can still see the burn pit from the large living room picture window. I'd bet with a little digging you could unearth some bones on the property as the police didn't dig the whole yard up looking for evidence. Use these to set up your own Hugo Museum! Get some poltergeit chasing camera crew into the house to validate your claim that the property is haunted and you've got a real moneymaking venture on your hands and the newest freak show attraction in this part of PA. The Economic Commission of W-B is always welcoming job opportunities and events that bring dollars into the area....maybe you can get some kind of city business grant to get this venture off the ground? I wonder if the Mayor Leighton will 'believe' this to be a good thing for Wilkes-Barre and use it in his "I Believe" campaign.
Auction is May 25th, at 11am sharp........get those bidding paddles & checkbooks out and get in line!
Sluggy
Monday, May 15, 2006
In Search of Scrambled Eggs
It's 11 am on a rainy Monday and I am about ready to drag my sorryass back to bed. I am still coughing persistently despise 2 weeks of meds from the family doc. ugh
This internet thing is highly addictive. Someone on a mailing list I am on sent a post about how you can make scrambled eggs by placing them in a Ziploc type bag put into a pot of boiling water. I went to google it to make sure it wasn't just one of those urban legends or online rumours that you see often on the web.
From there, I pulled up a post from someone's blog having to do with them trying out this method of egg cooking. As I read the post, I became absorbed by this blogger's writing. Next thing I know, I looked up and an hour and 1/2 had passed and I had become privy to some intimate glimpses into this person's life. Quite a bit about his background and his current family drama of his weight loss, how his wife's alcoholism is destroying their marriage & the uncertain state of what to do about his wife's father who's plummeting into Alzheimer's like dementia at a rapid rate. I've never met this guy yet I know more about his life and his inner feelings than I know about most people I've known for 20 years and, on the other hand, he hasn't a CLUE I exist!
Likewise, I am on a few online mailing lists. There are large numbers of members on some of these lists that have NEVER posted yet continue to remain on the lists and read about the lives of those who do post.
The internet is responsible for turning the vast majority of us into voyeurs. If we aren't buying crap on eBay, the payments for which we have to put on credit cards b/c we are 1 paycheck away from financial disaster, we are eavesdropping on total strangers lives and feelings.
Now how sick is this and what does it say about our current culture?
What drives someone to want to blog and share their life with the cyberworld?
A way to vent or talk out their conflicts when they have no one with which to share the process?
A misguided sense of their own importance in the world?
A way to communicate with the world without having to hear any criticism?
If you get that one figured out, I'd love to know. ;-)
sluggy
It's 11 am on a rainy Monday and I am about ready to drag my sorryass back to bed. I am still coughing persistently despise 2 weeks of meds from the family doc. ugh
This internet thing is highly addictive. Someone on a mailing list I am on sent a post about how you can make scrambled eggs by placing them in a Ziploc type bag put into a pot of boiling water. I went to google it to make sure it wasn't just one of those urban legends or online rumours that you see often on the web.
From there, I pulled up a post from someone's blog having to do with them trying out this method of egg cooking. As I read the post, I became absorbed by this blogger's writing. Next thing I know, I looked up and an hour and 1/2 had passed and I had become privy to some intimate glimpses into this person's life. Quite a bit about his background and his current family drama of his weight loss, how his wife's alcoholism is destroying their marriage & the uncertain state of what to do about his wife's father who's plummeting into Alzheimer's like dementia at a rapid rate. I've never met this guy yet I know more about his life and his inner feelings than I know about most people I've known for 20 years and, on the other hand, he hasn't a CLUE I exist!
Likewise, I am on a few online mailing lists. There are large numbers of members on some of these lists that have NEVER posted yet continue to remain on the lists and read about the lives of those who do post.
The internet is responsible for turning the vast majority of us into voyeurs. If we aren't buying crap on eBay, the payments for which we have to put on credit cards b/c we are 1 paycheck away from financial disaster, we are eavesdropping on total strangers lives and feelings.
Now how sick is this and what does it say about our current culture?
What drives someone to want to blog and share their life with the cyberworld?
A way to vent or talk out their conflicts when they have no one with which to share the process?
A misguided sense of their own importance in the world?
A way to communicate with the world without having to hear any criticism?
If you get that one figured out, I'd love to know. ;-)
sluggy
Friday, May 12, 2006
Welcome to my slimey blog
My First Entry
Greetings to all!
I hope ya'll find something worth reading here...if not today, some other day in the future.
I've been 'online' since Jan. '98 and in that time I've spent alot of hours on eBay, both as a buyer and seller. I've interacted with 'all kinds' as the old foks say.
The thing that brought me to eBay was Beanie Babies. Yes, I was one of those crazed Beanie Collectors-and later Sellers-who stood in lines at Hellmark Stores, Zany Brainys, etc. in 3 states for the priviledge of giving them $5 or $6 for a cheap little kid's toy. You are thinking, "This slug has/had waaay too much time on her hands." Between having 3 kids under the age of 8(one of which was 2 and still home all day), no job out in the workplace, an incredibly small house to clean & no adult to talk to, yes, I did have alot of time on my hands to drive around and shop.
I didn't get into Beanies early enough to have had any of the real old 'valuable' ones and I didn't spend outrageously inflated amounts for the hard to find ones or the retired ones. I knew and still know waaaay too many people who spent $100 or more for a Princess Beanie back in the day. By waiting a few months after it was released, I was able to get one for $5 reg. retail instead of having to pay through the nose to a secondary source like a flea market or eBay. I did turn to reselling some beanies on eBay in order to pay for my habit......sold things like Valentina bear beanie on eBay for $40 when it first came out and I happened to find one in a store for $5. Now that beanies sell for pennies on the dollar, even the old ones, do I feel bad for conning someone out of $40 for a toy? Nah.....it's a Free Market Economy baby! Something is only as valuable as what someone else will pay for it.
My main TY Addiction wasn't beanies, it was Attic Treasures. I switched over to Attics soon after finding those. Having alot of disposable income b/c of a tiny mortgage then on my tiny house, gave me quite the blank check for spending too much on these toys. I saw I could resell these Attics as more people discovered them, so I ended up acquiring many many Attics to resell on eBay.
When the Beanie/Attic market started it's fast slide into the basement in early '00, I got stuck holding lots of inventory that I couldn't sell. *sigh* Where was that damned crystal ball when I needed it?! I donated tons of them to various charities(Sallie's, Goodwill, various fundraisers that needed prizes, etc.) over the last few years. I still have boxes tucked away around here but I am hopeing that by the end of this year, I can completely 'divest' and put this long, ugly chapter of my addictive personality to bed.
So that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up selling stuff on eBay. It was a way to get rid of things(if only recouping small portions of what I spent)and then to sell off other things taking up space in my life. Every year, as eBay raises their fees and gets more impersonal and changes up the way to do things just for the sake of changing things and not for making the process any better, I tell myself I'm going to quit eBay at the end of this year......at the end of this season.......at the end of next month....... eBay is a hard habit to kick and I never seem to reach that deadline and actually stop even though little tiny sellers like me on eBay can't really make any money.
I predict that the next big money making scheme for eBay will be psychologists who set up eBay interventions for concerned families and offer therapy for eBay addicts. Besides the Sellers who sell Shipping Supplies to other Sellers on eBay & eBay executives, eBay Therapists will be the only other people actually turning a profit from eBay.
Ok....enough for now. Time to slime back under my shell.
sluggy
Greetings to all!
I hope ya'll find something worth reading here...if not today, some other day in the future.
I've been 'online' since Jan. '98 and in that time I've spent alot of hours on eBay, both as a buyer and seller. I've interacted with 'all kinds' as the old foks say.
The thing that brought me to eBay was Beanie Babies. Yes, I was one of those crazed Beanie Collectors-and later Sellers-who stood in lines at Hellmark Stores, Zany Brainys, etc. in 3 states for the priviledge of giving them $5 or $6 for a cheap little kid's toy. You are thinking, "This slug has/had waaay too much time on her hands." Between having 3 kids under the age of 8(one of which was 2 and still home all day), no job out in the workplace, an incredibly small house to clean & no adult to talk to, yes, I did have alot of time on my hands to drive around and shop.
I didn't get into Beanies early enough to have had any of the real old 'valuable' ones and I didn't spend outrageously inflated amounts for the hard to find ones or the retired ones. I knew and still know waaaay too many people who spent $100 or more for a Princess Beanie back in the day. By waiting a few months after it was released, I was able to get one for $5 reg. retail instead of having to pay through the nose to a secondary source like a flea market or eBay. I did turn to reselling some beanies on eBay in order to pay for my habit......sold things like Valentina bear beanie on eBay for $40 when it first came out and I happened to find one in a store for $5. Now that beanies sell for pennies on the dollar, even the old ones, do I feel bad for conning someone out of $40 for a toy? Nah.....it's a Free Market Economy baby! Something is only as valuable as what someone else will pay for it.
My main TY Addiction wasn't beanies, it was Attic Treasures. I switched over to Attics soon after finding those. Having alot of disposable income b/c of a tiny mortgage then on my tiny house, gave me quite the blank check for spending too much on these toys. I saw I could resell these Attics as more people discovered them, so I ended up acquiring many many Attics to resell on eBay.
When the Beanie/Attic market started it's fast slide into the basement in early '00, I got stuck holding lots of inventory that I couldn't sell. *sigh* Where was that damned crystal ball when I needed it?! I donated tons of them to various charities(Sallie's, Goodwill, various fundraisers that needed prizes, etc.) over the last few years. I still have boxes tucked away around here but I am hopeing that by the end of this year, I can completely 'divest' and put this long, ugly chapter of my addictive personality to bed.
So that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up selling stuff on eBay. It was a way to get rid of things(if only recouping small portions of what I spent)and then to sell off other things taking up space in my life. Every year, as eBay raises their fees and gets more impersonal and changes up the way to do things just for the sake of changing things and not for making the process any better, I tell myself I'm going to quit eBay at the end of this year......at the end of this season.......at the end of next month....... eBay is a hard habit to kick and I never seem to reach that deadline and actually stop even though little tiny sellers like me on eBay can't really make any money.
I predict that the next big money making scheme for eBay will be psychologists who set up eBay interventions for concerned families and offer therapy for eBay addicts. Besides the Sellers who sell Shipping Supplies to other Sellers on eBay & eBay executives, eBay Therapists will be the only other people actually turning a profit from eBay.
Ok....enough for now. Time to slime back under my shell.
sluggy
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