Let it be known -- I hate medicines. They reek of population control. You know, swapping one illness for another, all the while thinking that multicolored Tylenol is saving every organ in your body. But your liver is like, um, yuck. I don't think it's a surprise that there literally exist a medicine and diagnosis for everything. But this recent ad I came across takes the cake.
So it's a muggy and hot Monday afternoon (remember, I hate summer so I'm certainly not in my bestest of moods) and I'm driving to the North Shore to drop Diana off at the Dentist. You'd think a woman with a mouth dirtier than a New York subway and balls big enough to tell a man she'd piss on his face as a thank you for buying her a drink wouldn't need a "support buddy" to go have a tooth LOOKED at, would you? Well, she did.
I was miserable. I was hot, my hair was a frizzy mess. I could feel the curls on the back of my head drawing up into a shrub. And Diana's going on about getting off at the gynecologist and why more women don't do it. A conversation that on any other day I would relish for its scandalous comic relief, but at that time all I wanted was to go home, shower, slather on some mint cooling gel, order in Indian, and pop in a DVD, and conk out to Memoirs of a Geisha and fried gobi. Respectively. We finally make it to the dentist office and Diana is seen right away, ever punctual she is. So what do I do while I wait? Read the dusty, old magazines laid out for the Extremely Bored Friend Waiting for Friend. Ugh.
Why, why, why, why, do doctors' and dentists' offices have the same array of Happy Housewife magazines for its EBFWFF people to read? Seriously, your choices are between: Learn how to bake a cake, take up the entire neighborhood's hem, iron a months worth of your husband's work shirts AND manage to do it with three children attached at each hip all at once. Or, perhaps, the EBFWFF's would be interested in knowing how to properly collect coupons and save $.05 on a can of peas or make a water garden or grow tomatoes in an urban landscape with a foolproof -- non-Peta sanctioned -- method of keeping the rats out. I chose the former.
Not three pages in and already I've diagnosed myself with five illneses. These Happy Housewives magazines are nothing but billboards for the latest pill and potion and scare tactics of the pharmaceutical companies. Of course it is. Can't you hear the honchos now? "Women are frantic, neurotic; with the correct wording we can make 'em believe they have everything." Anyway, the one that really got me is from Astra-Zeneca and their 2-page advertisement with a deranged looking woman having a session of mania. With cute polaroid pictures they illustrated some of the most pathetic reasons why you should request more information about bipolar disorder.
A. Sleeping Less
B. Talking Too Fast
C. Buying Things You Don't Need
D. Spending Out of Control
F. Racing Thoughts
G. Flying off the Handle
H. Irritable
Going by this list, every woman on earth has bipolar disorder! Hell, I had every single symptom just yesterday alone. Who get's enough sleep? What woman doesn't talk too fast or too much? C. and D. are deafults of my sex. F. G. and H.? Ha, see me on a lonely, horny Friday night. Basically, this 2 page ad was saying: If you're a woman you probably have bipolar disorder.
Fair.
But nothing a little shopping and gabbing won't fix.
So it's a muggy and hot Monday afternoon (remember, I hate summer so I'm certainly not in my bestest of moods) and I'm driving to the North Shore to drop Diana off at the Dentist. You'd think a woman with a mouth dirtier than a New York subway and balls big enough to tell a man she'd piss on his face as a thank you for buying her a drink wouldn't need a "support buddy" to go have a tooth LOOKED at, would you? Well, she did.
I was miserable. I was hot, my hair was a frizzy mess. I could feel the curls on the back of my head drawing up into a shrub. And Diana's going on about getting off at the gynecologist and why more women don't do it. A conversation that on any other day I would relish for its scandalous comic relief, but at that time all I wanted was to go home, shower, slather on some mint cooling gel, order in Indian, and pop in a DVD, and conk out to Memoirs of a Geisha and fried gobi. Respectively. We finally make it to the dentist office and Diana is seen right away, ever punctual she is. So what do I do while I wait? Read the dusty, old magazines laid out for the Extremely Bored Friend Waiting for Friend. Ugh.
Why, why, why, why, do doctors' and dentists' offices have the same array of Happy Housewife magazines for its EBFWFF people to read? Seriously, your choices are between: Learn how to bake a cake, take up the entire neighborhood's hem, iron a months worth of your husband's work shirts AND manage to do it with three children attached at each hip all at once. Or, perhaps, the EBFWFF's would be interested in knowing how to properly collect coupons and save $.05 on a can of peas or make a water garden or grow tomatoes in an urban landscape with a foolproof -- non-Peta sanctioned -- method of keeping the rats out. I chose the former.
Not three pages in and already I've diagnosed myself with five illneses. These Happy Housewives magazines are nothing but billboards for the latest pill and potion and scare tactics of the pharmaceutical companies. Of course it is. Can't you hear the honchos now? "Women are frantic, neurotic; with the correct wording we can make 'em believe they have everything." Anyway, the one that really got me is from Astra-Zeneca and their 2-page advertisement with a deranged looking woman having a session of mania. With cute polaroid pictures they illustrated some of the most pathetic reasons why you should request more information about bipolar disorder.
A. Sleeping Less
B. Talking Too Fast
C. Buying Things You Don't Need
D. Spending Out of Control
F. Racing Thoughts
G. Flying off the Handle
H. Irritable
Going by this list, every woman on earth has bipolar disorder! Hell, I had every single symptom just yesterday alone. Who get's enough sleep? What woman doesn't talk too fast or too much? C. and D. are deafults of my sex. F. G. and H.? Ha, see me on a lonely, horny Friday night. Basically, this 2 page ad was saying: If you're a woman you probably have bipolar disorder.
Fair.
But nothing a little shopping and gabbing won't fix.