Turn on your TV and you’ll find commercial after commercial advertising one medication after another. Tune into a show that has a target audience of senior citizens and those ads will make up the overwhelming majority of the commercials you watch.

If you go back a few years, you might not remember seeing these kinds of ads before on your tube. That’s because until just recently, drug companies weren’t allowed to advertise on TV. Now, the United States is only one of two countries in the world who allow pharmaceutical companies to peddle their drugs on TV.

In the good old days, drug companies weren’t allowed to market this way. But in 1997, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loosened the restrictions on what is called direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, and since then pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars advertising their drugs to everyone with a television. In 2005, these companies spent $4.2 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising.

The result of all this advertising is that your average person now walks into their doctor’s office asking for one of these medications, not even knowing if it’s right for him or her. Meanwhile, the doctors are receiving trips to Bermuda and other “gifts” for prescribing these medications to their patients–whether the medication is right for them or not, all compliments of Big Pharma.

In addition to this, drug companies who advertise on TV need to recoup their advertising costs and how else are they going to do that other than raising the costs for their product–which they do. So now the average consumer without medical coverage is spending more on medication, just so Big Pharma can market their product to rest of America.

How is this not a problem and why hasn’t someone done something about it?

Is it not bad enough I have to sit through all these commercials, worrying that I have this or that and then wonder on top of that if my doctor is the type of man who will trade my health for a all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii?

This is something that needs to be changed and changed now.

If you read this blog, you’re aware of my disdain for Chemistry.com. Well, now I’m through with them for good.

After giving the folks over there a call about how I’m only receiving profiles from members who are no longer on the system, I asked for a refund and was refused. Apparently, buried deep within the fine print is a section where they state that they don’t issue refunds, even when you pay to meet real people and instead wind up with an inbox of worthless profiles from members who never became subscribers.

What’s really laughable is how they appear to do you a favor by canceling your subscription so you won’t be billed anymore after they take your money the first time. As if that’s going to make me happy now…

When I tell them that doesn’t satisfy me, that I still want my money back, they tell me that there’s nothing they can do. They don’t issue refunds. Well, seeing that they still don’t want to give me my money back, I resign to settle for a transfer of my account to Match.com (for those of you who didn’t know, they are sister sites.) This sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. They don’t do transfers either.

What Chemistry.com will do though is take your money and not feel bad about giving you worthless matches from people who aren’t members and have no intent on returning to the site to read your emails.

Guys, ever notice that when you’re out and about, you can always find a pretty girl hanging out with a friend that’s nowhere near as pretty as her. It always makes me wonder what life is like for the average girl; having to watch guy after guy approach her friend but never her. This must really suck for these women who’s friends and co-workers attract all the male attention. I had this thought again just today as I noticed a beautiful blonde having lunch with a co-worker who was both average looking and a few years older.

As the women got up to leave, instead of looking at the blonde, I watched the other men in the area as each and every one of them stared at her as she pushed in her chair and threw away her trash. I then wondered if her co-worker saw all this and if her self-confidence was already on a downhill slide. A few minutes later I got up myself and left the cafe, heading over to Starbucks to get a coffee. Lo and behold, the girls were there again. While Ms. Average girl was ordering her coffee, I struck up a conversation with the pretty one while every guy in the store was staring at her finest asset. We exchanged pleasantries for the next minute and they went off to pick up their coffee.

After getting my own cup of java, I decided to join them outside and tried to make conversation with both of them. I was sure the older woman would at least be up to a 5 minute conversation, seeing that she would enjoy the attention she was getting in front of Ms. Pretty Girl. But for some reason, I was met with yes/no responses followed by a lack of eye contact. Why was she acting like this when the pretty one was more receptive to me? Was she trying to prove a point? Did I offend her by talking with her younger, sexy friend first?

Obvious to the fact that Average Girl didn’t want me talking to her or her friend, I got up and walked back to my car. It occurred to me that women like her must have to deal with this every day, always playing second fiddle to the pretty one. I mean, what pretty woman doesn’t get hit on at least twice a day? Doing the math, it seems that playing the part of the average girl could really hurt your self-confidence causing you to act irrational, like trying to avoid a 5 minute convo with a stranger just because you think the guy’s surely after your pretty co-worker and not you.

It makes you wonder how pretty girls have any friends at all that aren’t as pretty as them. I mean…who wants that job?

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you might have heard about the 2 girls who were banned from Southwest Airlines after causing problems on a flight to Los Angeles. University of South Florida student Nisreen Swedberg and her friend Sarah Williams claimed they were being discriminated against because they were prettier than everyone else. Everyone else on the plane got the impression they were banned because they were shouting obscenities, yelling at the flight attendants, and generally causing havoc at 30,000 feet in tight quarters.

What bothers me is their defense of “we were targeted because like, we’re just so pretty.” Can you believe that young girls actually act like this now? Welcome to the MTV culture where attitude has become a positive thing for a young woman.

Young women strut around nowadays like they are queens and everyone else are servants and court jesters. Compare that to the young ladies of old were just that, ladies. They looked like ladies and handled themselves accordingly so no one would think otherwise. Now, I don’t even know if such a woman exists anymore.

Let’s go back a few years to a time when parents actually raised their daughters to act properly. Can you imagine a young woman from a generation or two ago putting on this kind of a display and then having the gall to tell everyone the flight attendants kicked her off the plane because they were jealous of her beauty? And what parent from that generation would allow their kid to get away with this crap?

Maybe these girls should grow up and realize the world doesn’t revolve around them. And maybe their parents should tell them that being pretty doesn’t mean you have a reason to treat others however you feel.

When I log onto this blog, the first thing I do is look and see if anyone has made comments to my posts. I don’t care if it’s positive or negative, just that someone made one. That way I know that the 20 or so people who come to this blog aren’t just robots.

Since I’m not getting a good number of these comments, I’m gonna let you pick a subject for me to write about. You tell me what would interest you enough to leave a remark. And since this is a Mixed Bag blog, it can pretty much be about anything. If you want me to take on our media, put it down. If you wanna hear more about our government, lemme know. I just wanna know what my visitors are looking for…

Big Talk And Gun Smoke, being a new blog and all is still looking to find itself. It hasn’t yet discovered its focus so I’m totally open to exploring new avenues. But do me this favor, when you suggest something to write about, tell me how you feel about it yourself. I need your viewpoint on things to see who’s in what corner. Basically, I just wanna know more about my readers…

If you’ve ever watched Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo, you’ve seen this pathetic woman and know what her show is all about. She finds beautiful ladies for millionaires who are looking for the love of their life and basically just need to be introduced to a nice girl.

Enter Patti Stanger; a woman who loves to give unwanted advice to these millionaires on things like “how to treat a woman on a date.” For some reason, she likes to assume that all men need her direction on how to act appropriately around a female and then uses this reason to talk down to these men like they were children.

Her pathetic persona on this show is a thinly-veiled attempt to mask her anger at things in her own personal life. It’s anyone’s guess what angers her but I’d venture it has to do with the fact that she’s old, fat, ugly, and unmarried herself. This theory comes from the fact that she hates older men, younger women relationships. I can’t remember the last episode where she didn’t go off on a man because he prefers dating women in their 20’s. Gee, think she’s a little jealous of these younger, more beautiful women?

Once she hears these awful words, she goes into bitch mode and begins to repeat time and time again that these younger women don’t want older men, that they’ll eventually seek out a younger man to replace them. Apparently, this is how life is in Patti Stanger’s fantasy world. In the real world though, younger women marry older men every day. Ms. Stanger just hasn’t come to grips with this fact yet. And so she goes on deluding herself while lying to these men, trying to get them to date someone older so she can “show them the way.”

When she’s not talking down to men, she’s yelling and talking down to her staff that consists of two women much younger than her. One can only feel sorry for these girls who have to sit there and take her abuse in order to continue enjoying their 15 minutes of fame on that show. When one episode aired where the girls covertly planned to start their own agency, I found myself right there at the table with them, enjoying their secretive plans, just as much as they did. I mean, who could blame them from wanting to break free from their angry, overbearing boss?

As much as I laugh at this woman, I have to say I enjoy the show. I especially loved the last couple of episodes of Millionaire Matchmaker where one man finally told her off when she spoke to him like a 6 year old child. The week before it was one of her staff who told her she needed to keep her anger in check. Hey Patti, think you might have an anger problem? How many people need to tell you there’s something wrong before you’ll start to listen?

Why is Free Speech so important to Americans?

Why speak up about things that don’t seem to directly affect you?

Perhaps Pastor Martin Neimoller’s quote will answer that question for you…

He supported the Nazis until he realized, too late, what they were really about and was sent to Dachau concentration camp.
Fortunately, he was eventually freed and lived until 1984.

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Social Democrats,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Social Democrat.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew,
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

I thought this was an excellent reminder of how we constantly shackle ourselves to prisons that we think we belong to when we should really be doing what we want and having fun in life…

The 8 Irresistible Principles Of Fun