Monday . March 25 . 2002 . 9:10pm |
pig pen I was going to do my second annual Oscar Cavalcade of Fashion analysis here today, what with the Academy Awards last night and all. However, since I'm in Connecticut, my dial-up modem connection is actually just so slow that I can't even really get online in any efficient way to download good photos to put up. So I'll probably either do it later on this week, or wait so long that nobody will care anymore. Both viable options. Today I am very excited because I got two new drug pens. I will not say the drug names here, but they're both for new products each respective pharmaceutical company is clearly trying very hard to push onto the market. But the point, see, is that they gave out free pens. The first one is a clickity-click retractable tip ball-point, made with frosted grey plastic, very iMac-looking. The other, also clickity ball-point, is heavy silver metal with little purple nubbly things at the finger grip site to enhance traction. I feel like such a whore with my drug pens, but how can something so wrong feel so, so right? I didn't even tell you all about my most flagrant drug pen-related transgression last week. It's so terrible, actually, that I'm embarassed to share. (Last Wednesday at the clinic) LITTLE DRUG REP MAN (Dropping off samples of Drug X) Well, how are y'all doin' today, huh? Lousy weather outside, innit? Ha! (Big salesman grin) DR. H (Totally ignoring the small talk) Can we have more samples of Drug Y? LITTLE DRUG REP MAN Sure! Let me just note down how many boxes I'm giving you here... (Starts writing figures on his sales sheet with his nice, shiny, metallic blue bodied drug pen) (MICHELLE is mesmerized by the beauty of the pen. Yet she cannot ask for the pen, because then she will too obviously be a pawn of the drug company's advertising ploy. But...she really, really wants that free pen. It's shiny and blue! Come on now! But how can she get the pen without actually asking the rep for it? Suddenly, an idea dawns.) MICHELLE (To LITTLE DRUG REP MAN, very innocently) Hey, that's a really nice pen! LITTLE DRUG REP MAN (Instantly pushing it across the table at her) You like it? It's yours! MICHELLE (Still innocently, protesting) No, come on. I can't take your pen! LITTLE DRUG REP MAN (Showing her the advertising logo on the pen) Look at this. I have about a thousand of these in my car. Come on, just take it! MICHELLE (Pseudo-hesitation) Well... LITTLE DRUG REP MAN Take it! MICHELLE Well...OK. MICHELLE'S INNER MONOLOGUE Unclean! So unclean! Ooh, shiny. Getting drug pens is like getting beads at Mardi Gras. At first, you don't really understand why people want them at all. They're just some crappy plastic beads, right? Then, after a day, you start to think, "Well, they're pretty and all, but I would never ASK for them. I would never DO anything to get beads. That's low." But then the more time you spend at Mardi Gras, the more you want the beads. Everyone else has them. They start to look more and more attractive. So many colors! Some beads look like little disco balls! It's just for fun, right? You start to bend your own rules, little by little. Next thing you know, you're showing boobs and kissing girls in order to get the sweet, sweet beadiness. (Isn't that right, Sara?) It's all mind games, I tells you! If it makes any difference at all, I don't use my drug pens. In clinic, and in the hospital, I write with a pen that I bought at Staples. I don't want to advertise for the drug companies. I don't want to be like NASCAR driver, with Pfizer, Merck, and Bristol-Meyers-Squibb product placement all over my body. I'm trying to be fairly clean and upstanding in my budding clinical practice. But I do have a mug of pretty, pretty drug pens on my nightstand. I've been collecting them. I don't write with them, I just like to look at them from time to time. They are my secret shame. xo Michelle |
