Goddam NaziCops!

So I’ve still got my cold, right? After 12 days, I’ve still got my cold, but then we’ve already established that my immune system is fucked.

I’ve been taking TheraFlu, which is this mixture of a decongestant and analgesic in a packet, and you pour this packet in boiling water and you drink it like tea. Which is a nice, relaxing thing to do if you’ve got a cold, and the medicine gets absorbed by your stomach lining and goes straight to work.

But there’s a problem with TheraFlu, and every other cold remedy on the planet, because what they use for a painkiller is acetominophen. Paracetamol. Tylenol. “The most prescribed pain reliever in the world,” as they say in the ads.

Except they don’t have to prescribe it, they give the stuff away by the metric tonne. They put it in every over-the-counter remedy whether you want it there or not.

The reason it’s so common is that acetominophen has fewer side effects than aspirin. But it does have some nasty interactions. If you take it with hydrocodone or codeine or any other opiate, it wildly increases the chance that you will OD. And if you take it with alcohol, there is a non-zero chance that your liver will cease to function and you will die.

And you will die. There is no way to reverse this, once it happens.

Benign ol’ Tylenol, “the most prescribed pain reliever in the world,” can kill you dead.

So I have been refraining from alcohol while I’ve had my cold. Which is a shame, because quite frankly the cold would have been more fun if I’d been splayed in my easy chair watching Dr. Who while hammered on margaritas. I mean, I already had the headache, y’know?

But this weekend I’ll be out of town at a literary event (see the poster below, somewhere), and nice folks will be taking me out to dinner, and I thought it would be nice if I could have a beer with said dinner.

So I went to the pharmacy in search of a decongestant that I had no acetominophen in it. And the only one I could find was Sudafed. Which was not actually on the shelf, but was available in the form of a ticket that I could take to the pharmacy counter.

Why? Because speed freaks were buying cartloads of Sudafed to take home, dump into plastic trash cans, and brew up into crystal meth, which they would then sell to other meth junkies, including (presumably) the pair who broke into my home last year. So you are restricted as to how much pseudoephedrine you can purchase at a time.

Not that this practice seems to be slowing the growth of yaabaa as a recreational drug, because it isn’t.

So anyway, I take my little ticket to the counter, and I ask, “Can I have two packets, or will that put me on the DEA list?”

And the pharmacist says, “I’ll check.” And then she asks for my ID.

So the next thing you know, she’d entering the contents of my driver’s license into a computer, and then informs me that “They” will allow me to have only one packet. I don’t know whether “They” is the government or Big Pharma.

So. I am now on The List, as a Suspicious Person who bought twenty little capsules of pseudoephedrine.

I don’t know what The List is used for. I don’t know who keeps it. I don’t know who has access to it. I’m just pissed off that it fucking exists at all!

Another element in the Total Surveillance Society, slipped in without anyone noticing.

Our Superiors have concluded that the way to combat meth abuse is to treat ordinary citizens as if they were criminals, or at least parolees. Just as the way to combat terrorism is to treat ordinary citizens as if they were terrorists, and make them take their shoes off in airports.

Fuck that. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

On a more positive note, Judge Ann Aiken has struck down two provisions of the Patriot Act.

“Prior to the amendments [to FISA], the three branches of government operated with thoughtful and deliberate checks and balances — a principle upon which our nation was founded,” Aiken wrote.

But the Patriot Act, she said, eliminated “the constitutionally required interplay between executive action, judicial decision and Congressional enactment.”

“For over 200 years, this nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised,” she wrote.

To quote Jim McDonald, “we applaud the courageous judge who struck down two of its provisions while at the same time mourning that a judge would have to be courageous to do so.”