n the wake of a landmark $253 million lawsuit that found the company liable for heart damage caused by its arthritis painkiller Vioxx, things went from bad to shitty bad for drug giant Merck this week, as a group of prescription drug abusers announced they were suing the company for taking Vioxx off the market during the shitstorm of controversy last year.

“We were all hooked on Vioxx, and Merck left us high and dry,� sobbed prescription painkiller addict and group spokesperson Beth Simmons of Noodle Cove, Maine. “Somebody needs to pay for all the bedspreads I shit while I was detoxing after Merck’s short-sighted decision to yank Vioxx off the market.�

“Just because a few pussies had heart attacks is no reason to put good people through the hell we’ve all been through,� added group member Tom Cripe. “Shame on you, Merck.�

“Vioxx got you high as shit,� agreed fellow abuser Dennis Melvin, staring off into space.

Though unusual, the lawsuit is not as revolutionary as many might assume. It follows in the footsteps of last year’s landmark State of Louisiana Vs. BDI Pharmaceuticals settlement, which found manufacturer BDI liable for the productivity lost and emotional damage caused when they reformulated their Mini Thins ephedrine tablets under the new name Mini Two-Way Action, to prevent abuse by truckers and to boost sales among rhinoceros horn-grinding aphrodisiac freaks.

“Merck formed a good-faith pact with their customers,� explained prosecuting attorney Ray Longam. “An implicit agreement that said: you get hooked on our pills, crushing them up and snorting them up your nose, or shooting a solution into your ass fat, scamming your insurance company out of thousands to feed your addiction, or turning to the black market to buy Vioxx pills stolen out of the medicine cabinets of old ladies, you hold up your end of the bargain, and we’ll keep you high as fuck all the time. Only Merck didn’t live up to their end of the bargain. And that’s just not right. Somebody’s got to stand up for the little guy.�

Joe Borchard, a little guy who estimates he snorted over $10,000 in powdered Vioxx pills during the painkiller’s short reign, is happy to know his voice will finally be heard. “I had to switch to OxyContin after they took Vioxx off the market. And that was a major pain in the ass. I could never remember how to spell it. One time I snorted a whole bottle of pimple cream on accident, and that shit dried out my brain for like three weeks.�

A Merck spokesperson, however, finds the lawsuit to be absurd.

“These people are clearly stupid,� explained Merck spokesperson Charles Ludlow. “Vicodin will get you so high you shit your pants and don’t even know it. So what were these people doing messing around with Vioxx? If we give these people a few million dollars in a settlement, they’re probably just going to blow it trying to get high off asthma medicine or something.�

Legal experts contend that an unfavorable judgment could cost Merck millions in expired Vioxx tablets, rumored to be buried in bunkers in the New Mexico desert. Industry insiders suggest that the pharmaceutical giant would be better served by paying off the plaintiffs before the trial even begins with free samples of Arcoxia, the company’s Vioxx replacement, which is twice as addictive as Vioxx and gets you so high there’s no way you’d get to the courthouse on time.

Appeals Court Rules Hilton Legitimately Too Pretty to Survive Prison

Climatologists Cross Legs Uncomfortably at Mention of Bangkok Conference

Merck: “Crazy-Ass Brazil Giving AIDS Drugs to People With No Money”

Poison Probe Reveals 90% of Packaged Foods Actually Dog Food

Hello, reader of Boris. Is day good? Yes, what you say is not the shit.

If you are asking, Boris is good. All days is good since Boris make friend with big bee. Talk about great thing, this is bee friend.

It all starts when Boris has dream. In dream, Boris is walking down road. This part, you are thinking, is maybe not in dream since Boris walks down road in awake world also. But wait for next part. Next thing is that Boris sees big bee! But Boris is not afraid or hiding in bush. Brave dream Boris walk up to big bee and speaks words which show up in air like letters! Is funny dream things.

"R U A B?" is saying Boris.

"I M A B." is what big bee says in letters.

Boris is thinking this is the holy shit. There should be camera or audience persons for this thing. Is like crazy dream.

"O" saying Boris to bee. "I C."

This is when Boris takes bee hand in Boris hand and walk as friends. Is nice end for dream, nicer than other dreams which end with Boris eaten by dinosaur.

So when wake up, Boris knows he now has big bee friend. Yay for Boris! Boris does spend afternoon outside in sun's shine, playing game with bee friend. Boris and bee plays tag, and hide the go look. Are fun games, yes. Boris want to play Connecting Four, but bee doesn't not like this game.

Instead Boris takes bee friend inside to have lunch. Spaghetti-zeroes for Boris, and honey for bee. Honey is good thing for bee, is what bee eats in out of doors.

Boris and bee take nap, and wakes up when Louis come home. Boris is all the way excited to tell Louis story of how Boris and bee make friends. But before story can be said, Louis sits in chair where bee is sleeping! Louis does not see big bee, and oh my God, Louis is jumping and stung in the butt. And bee is sick from killing Louis. Is all so exciting and loud.

When all is done, Louis is in bad butt-swollen mood, and bee is taking nap forever. Him is so sleepy. Boris make little matchbox bed for bee, like in good cartoon movie, and tucks bee in for sleeping. Is nice.

Louis says there is lessons to learn from big bee adventures, and lesson is "Goddammit Boris!" Yes, is true. But like person says, when God flush the toilet, him open a window. And is true. Big bee friend is gone, but now "Similar to Skippy" dog does come out from under bed. So good thing can come from Louis killing friend of Boris with butt.

º Last Column: Big Bee
º more columns

Welcome to part one of a very special commune promotional feature (what the powers that be at the commune don't know won't hurt them), a series of excerpts from my upcoming book "You Look Like An Asshole: The History of Fads." Unless the world ends in the next month, parts one and two will look at the greatest fad decade ever known to man: the 1950's.

The 1950's were a fertile decade for embarrassing fads, as the national IQ had reached a record low not seen since the days when our ancestors thought it would be fun to take the Indians out and get them drunk. America in the 1950's was still reeling from the fact that the country's best minds had burnt themselves out cracking Nazi code in WWII, so by the 50's they just spent their time inventing crap like the hula-hoop and the scooter. This is the only acceptable explanation for a generation of otherwise passable Homo sapiens running around with tap shoes on their feet all the time. Nobody is certain how that insanity got started, but it wasn't long before you weren't anybody if you didn't sound like a team of Clydesdales walking down the street. Eventually this trend had to be outlawed after basketball spectators started going deaf and there was one too many tragic fires started by workers in the nation's flint quarries.

When looking at Fads of the 50's, few can top the practice of piling a bunch of assholes into a phone booth for the present-day denial factor of all involved. This originally started as a way for Universities to inexpensively house foreign exchange students, but before long the insecure white student populace decided that no foreign pinkos were going to show them how many peer-pressured nimrods you could squeeze into a phone booth. Like all fads, this soon grew out of hand and by 1958 it was impossible to find a phone booth anywhere that wasn't stuffed to the ceiling with dead college students.

Later, after the practice was outlawed, it was discovered that the record everyone was trying to beat (25 people stuffed into one telephone booth) was actually set by two guys who were so stoned that every time the phone rang they thought there was somebody else in the booth with them. Thankfully for the runaways and drug dealers with a legitimate need to use public telephones, this fad was soon replaced with one involving how many duck farts you could squeeze into a Volkswagen.

Another front-runner for stupidest fad ever was the Duck's Ass haircut. Invented by a barber in the 1940's as a joke on neighborhood kids he didn't like, the grease-mop style spread locally as all the other kids became insecure that their heads didn't look enough like the ass-end of a duck and demanded a quick remedy to their respectable appearance. This fluke probably would have ended with that gaggle of lead paint chip-eating imbeciles, but as fate would have it, dimwitted local rocker Roger Stagg of the Jersey Turnpikes inadvertently modeled the style while being beaten by the New York City police on the evening news one night in 1951, and within minutes of the broadcast the Duck's Ass had landed on heads all throughout the faux-tough world. Musicians and movie stars mistook the style for the look of the street, and after they adopted the haircut it trickled down and eventually became the actual look of the street, in some kind of bizarre chicken-eating-an-egg loop that it hurts the brain to comprehend.

However, this look soon faded away after a few dozen greasers bought the farm while blowing out the candles on their birthday cakes, and tales of these grisly grease-fire head infernos spread to suburbia. That part was left out of The Outsiders; but trust me, it was like Vietnam crossed with a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial.

The 1950's also saw the birth of the panty raid, a masculine rite of passage for guys who would never, ever get laid. This unfortunate craze started when some wiseacre convinced the incoming class of freshman males at Tulane University that if they snuck into the girls' dorms and stole all their underwear, the girls would have no choice but to walk around naked all year and have promiscuous sex with anyone who asked politely. This being the 1950's, the guys bought it hook, line and sinker, and a shallow gene pool tradition was born. At first girls retaliated by staging their own boxer raids, but that turned out to be a lot of work and soon the girls discovered that sleeping only with jerks was the best revenge of all.

There were more ridiculous fads in the 1950's alone than there are deadbeat dads on the commune payroll, but this column is already longer than Leo Tolstoy's wedding vows so you'll have to stuff that curiosity back into the cat until next issue. Until then and possibly after, I'm Griswald Dreck.

º Last Column: Medicine for Dummies
º more columns