Who's Fooling Who

Listen to the sound of milk of magnesia. You think milk. Milk is a white, creamy, good-tasting beverage. Milk of magnesia is a white, creamy, foul-tasting medicine. Who are they trying to fool? The cod liver oil makers don’t do that. You think of cod, liver, and oil and you just know it’s going to taste like what you think used motor oil would taste like. They’re straight and upfront.

Those little liver pills are another one. Are they called that because they’re little or because the manufacturer wants you to believe it’ll make your liver little again? You know, the way it was before you started drinking a fifth of bourbon every night. Washing the pills down with a shot of booze is not recommended by the makers. Admittedly, it won’t make anything worse but it sure won’t make anything better.

Look at the names they use for aspirin. The names alone will give you a headache. Trying to open the child-proof bottle makes it all worse. Remember, you already have a headache, so let’s make getting the damn bottle open a headache too. Yes, it’s to protect our children, despite the fact that our children usually are the cause of our headaches. Least ways, the worst ones.

Ever wonder who thinks these names up? Who plans the naming of a product you wouldn’t take if you weren’t so sick you’d take arsenic if it was available. When you’re that ill, you don’t care what it’s called or what it tastes like. Why can’t they make those little liver pills taste like bourbon. Now, there’s a marketing scheme. Kids sure don’t care what you call it or what it tastes like. They aren’t taking it no matter what. Giving medicine to a kid is putting your fingers at risk. Of course, you need a pill to ward off infection from amputations.

What made some scientists think to take old, moldy bread and make a drug from it? My mother did that for years. No,she did not make medicine from it; she made bread pudding from it. Tasted like old, used motor oil filters but we were the healthiest family in town. The day-old store loved to see her coming. That way they never had to throw bread away just because it was green.

The Army developed a good drug to use in war. It supposedly would confuse the enemy, giving the good guys a bigger advantage. The question was would it work? The only way to find out was to test it. Get some volunteers and give them a blast. The problem was that the military folks never volunteered for anything and the military didn’t believe in asking. So, just lace a couple of drinks and see what happens. The results were so horrible that the project was shelved but not before some enterprising assistant got the formula, made his own, and retired to St.Thomas. LSD stands for laced soft drink.

How many times have you been fooled into paying a sixty-five dollar office visit to get a forty-dollar prescription for a drug that you take every four hours, get plenty of rest, drink plenty of liquids, and come back and see me in three days for another sixty-five dollar office visit? You’re not only stupid but forgetful too. As a kid, you got the plenty of rest, plenty of liquids and chicken broth. Three days later you felt fine. You’d say you did just to get out of the chicken broth. Your mother wasn’t paying some doctor to do anything she couldn’t do on her own. No doctor was going to scam Mama.

Take another look at that office visit. A nurse takes your blood pressure, your temperature, asks you what’s wrong and leaves. The doctor comes in, reads what the nurse wrote, possibly looks at you, mumbles something, and leaves. The nurse returns and tells you what the doctor meant. She says it with a perfectly straight face too. That's one of the requirements of nursing. Most nurses are failed actresses. Most doctors are successful con artists.

The inhalation technicians take the cake. They come in, they stick a tube in your mouth, turn a dial and get paid more than you. There’s a real skill to putting that tube in right. No, there isn’t, it’s just another con job. It goes along with the X-ray tech who hides behind a lead shield while you get bombarded. Don’t you get a little suspicious of that?

When health insurance became all the rage, doctors hated it. All those forms to fill out; have to wait for the money. Then, some doctor realized that people with health insurance went to the doctors more often. Yea, he had to fill out forms and had to wait for the money but got more of it! That’s the reason for being a doctor in the first place isn’t it?. Sure, you had to lie about what was wrong but so what? It became a gold mine.

Eventually the health insurance people caught on to the scam and started telling the doctors how long to keep you in the hospital and what sort of tests they should run. You might have a seven-day infection but if a doctor in the health insurance office decided you had a five-day infection, then that was it. Out you go. That doctor never laid eyes on you but he knew as much as your own doctor. Probably did. Your doctor was still a better scam artist, though. He’d send you home and then bring you back for another stay. So, what should have been a seven day infection could turn into a month if your doctor worked it right. The doctor might have to exaggerate a bit or lie outright if all else fails. The government has its own special brand of fooling. Being the government it has to go over the top. The President’s Cabinet, there’s a name, is headed by Secretaries., Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, etc. Each if them has a secretary except they aren’t called secretaries, they’re called Administrators. So there you have it. Administrators called secretaries and secretaries called Administrators and the public can’t figure out why the government is screwed up!

The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense is supposed to advise the President on foreign matters. The truth is that neither one has any influence whatsoever with any President. The National Security Advisor has all the power. The only one the Advisor fears is the Director of the CIA since that’s where all the information comes from in the first place and might well kill you if you question them about anything.

Go to any meeting of this group and you’ll see the two Secretaries fighting over who gets coffee for the Advisor. The Advisor is busy elbowing them aside to get coffee and cookies for the CIA Director. The Director is laughing up his sleeve since everything he tells the Advisor is a fiction. The CIA is too busy spying on the FBI to worry about a bunch of foreigners.

Hollywood has it’s own way of fooling the public. They’re experts as it should be since that why they exist. Their job is to get you to spend money to see something that’s not even real except the Godzilla movies. Anyone and everyone even remotely connected to a movie gets a credit. After the stars and the producer and the director get their names on they run the other names. They run them so fast that you can’t read them. A few of the good ones are personal assistants to the stars, gaffers, and best boys. Personal assistants is Hollywood’s way of saying gofer. No one knows what a gaffer or a best boy is. The producer doesn’t know either. The producer only knows that a certain number of them have to be hired. Ask a best boy to do something and you’re told that’s the gaffer’s job. Tell the gaffer and you’re told it’s the best boy’s job and we wouldn’t want a jurisdictional dispute, now would we?

Then there’s garbage collectors. Nothing wrong with that. It’s honest work that has to be done. A lot of people look down their noses at them. The garbage collectors started calling themselves sanitation engineers. No one else did though. It was always, “Oh, he’s just a garbage collector.” Until they went on strike. Then it was, “Where are the sanitation engineers?” He also was immune to all diseases. Garbage is a vaccine.

Who’s fooling who?