Pfizer Markets New Wellness Drug

n a move that market analysts hope will save Christmas for the pharmaceutical industry, American drug giant Pfizer has launched a new marketing campaign this month to promote Heroin™, the company’s revolutionary new “wellness� drug.

Pfizer’s first ad, aired during a particularly painful recent episode of Joan of Arcadia, opted for stark minimalism, featuring a still shot of a satisfied Heroin™ customer, slumped over a very clean toilet, married with the slogan “Heroin™: The Other White Powder.� In addition to establishing their brand in the marketplace, this first ad served to differentiate Pfizer’s new product from rival Glaxo-Wellcome’s Angel Dust™.

Other early ads, run during football games, select MTV programs, and really sad chick flicks, have also been deliberately vague, aiming to raise brand awareness without mentioning the medication’s effects, enabling Pfizer to sidestep governmental regulations requiring pharmaceutical ads to disclose all of a drug’s side-effects. This tactic is especially shrewd with a product like Heroin™, since it’s tough to find a nice way to say “back-alley cocksuck� or “deadly constipation.�

While some consumer advocates have complained in the past that such direct-to-consumer marketing is predatory and harmful, drug companies like Pfizer argue that it’s actually very profitable.

“When there’s just some spaghetti-spined M.D. standing between customers and our products, consumer education becomes more important than ever,� contends Pfizer spokesperson Dennis Tanner. “Consumers shouldn’t have to trust that some kooky doctor is looking out for their best interest. They need a name they can trust, like Pfizer.�

Heroin™ is being marketed as a revolutionary “wellness� drug; one that Pfizer claims will “knock aspirin on its ass� and “make Prozac look like dogshit.� Rather than prescribing numerous non-Pfizer drugs to treat an array of patient maladies, the pharmaceutical giant hopes doctors will turn to their new wellness drug as a cure-all, one that leaves patients with a euphoric sensation of well-being, regardless of whether they are suffering from general anxiety, cancer, or baldness.

“That’s the miracle of Heroin™,� explained Tanner. “It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with you. From erectile dysfunction to agoraphobia, Heroin™ makes it all better.�

Due to FDA hang-ups regarding such a revolutionary new treatment, Pfizer has opted to avoid the usual years of getting-monkeys-high testing usually necessary to release a new drug. Instead, the drug giant has followed the lead of Merck’s Crack™ and AstraZeneca’s LSD™ by bypassing the usual established network of doctors and pharmacists, and is offering the drug through a network of authorized Pfizer representatives nationwide.

“Heroin™ will not be available in stores, but instead through a special network of independent distributors. It’s sort of like Amway,� claims the company’s latest ad. “Ask your dealer about Heroin™.�

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Every time I get into a fistfight with a prominent scientist, it always seems like it's over the subject of perpetual motion machines, and whether or not I could build one. So this week I decided to put my guns in the ground and settle this argument once and for all the mature way: by making them look stupid. I knew this was an engineering problem that had vexed scientists for millennia, and I figured I had an entire weekend to kill, so what the hell.

My first thought was that kidnapping the Energizer Bunny was the answer, but then I read on an Urban Legends website that that thing actually runs on Ethanol or cow gas or something, it's really all just a fraud. Bummer aside, I was glad I read that before I went to all the trouble of renting a full-body wolf suit.

Then I was thinking the key had to be in one of those M.C. Escher drawings, since that dude seems to have the inside track on mind-bending bullshit. So I pulled some plywood off the walls of my neighbor Hamms' tool shed and set out to build an M.C. Escher staircase inside the Bricks Manor, since once I had one of those, pretty much anything would work as a perpetual motion machine: a slinky, a softball, a random drunk off the street. Pretty much anything that can fall downstairs forever would do the trick.

Let me be the first to say that M.C. Escher shit is confusing as hell to build. That dude might have had a good eye for color or whatever, but he definitely flunked the class where they teach you to make easy-to-follow blueprints. Twice I ended up with staircases that descended into themselves, like a snake crawling up its own ass, only not as funny. You can only bang your shins or your chin so many times before that shit gets old. The third time I ended up with a staircase into some weird parallel dimension I didn't recognize at all. My neighbor Mitch said it was my attic, but I told him I didn't order a house with one of those, since I couldn't afford a lot of fancy options back then.

The fourth time I figured I'd just keep building until I got it right, and I ended up in Hamms' basement again, where I ran out of sky to build into. Then Hamms was complaining some bullshit about how there was a staircase coming out of my bathroom window, arcing over his house, then running back in his living room window, through his house and down into his basement, and also that his shed was missing. I told him this was impossible, but he didn't see the Escher drawing as compelling evidence the way I did.

So I had to give up on the whole Escher plan, thanks to Hamms' lack of vision. But that's when that famous scientific maxim hit me: it's not the size of the boat; it's the motion of Laotians. What I needed was some cheap immigrant labor.

A quick trip to the Dollar Store cleared up my misconception that the people there will do anything you want for a dollar. But I did find my perpetual-motion answer in the place I was least expecting it: the balloon aisle.

You know those balloons with the rubber band attached that you make a fist around, then you punch the balloon like it was your boss and it bounces back and forth on your hand forever? I love those things. And we all know how awesome they are in old-folks homes and china stores, but I didn't realize until right then that they're also a scientific breakthrough. You've only got to hit one of those things once, hang on, and whamo! You've got yourself perpetual motion. So I wasted no time buying out the store's entire stock and headed home, with a punch-balloon pumping on each hand.

Granted, that made driving home kind of tricky, but I got there. And further experimentation in the Bricks laboratories proved it: I was a genius. I'm not sure what my punch-balloon perpetual motion machine is going to be good for, but if you need something that makes a lot of noise, pisses off everyone in the room and makes the elderly uneasy without using up any power, then this thing is made to order. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I figure out how to harness the punch-balloon's power. I've already taught Foghat to use one, and I can tell it's going to save him a lot of time and energy.

I was excited to share my discovery with Hamms, but he was too crabby that the workers he hired to tear down my staircase didn't speak any English, so he wasn't in the right mindset to appreciate the thrill of scientific discovery. But late tonight, after Hamms has had time to calm down some, I'm going let Foghat loose in Hamms' bedroom to demonstrate the magic of punch-balloon energy, and that should make a believer out of him. Either that or the constant wob-wob-wob noise emanating from Bricks Manor 24 hours a day will draw him over like a moth to a bug zapper. Bricks out.

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In all the other hubbub since the year began, I may have forgotten to mention my old bassist roommate Lee returned. He arrived shortly after Christmas, when his plan to storm Tokyo with techno rock failed miserably. It's okay, though, because he has started a Christian rock band. It makes sense, if you think about it, since he believed he died in the car accident years ago and is now reincarnated as a street preacher.

Surely you don't expect me to mention every minute detail that happens in my life, so sorry if some of this stuff comes as a surprise. I had originally planned this column, in fact, to be an update of how the X-M radio purchase was going when Camembert suggested I write about Lee to my "loyal reader." Camembert thinks that's funny. Ever since he started dating Girl Elvis he thinks he's a hoot, there's no other word for it.

Back to the Lee story, good people. Lee is back, yes, and he believes he's a street preacher, out to promote the gospel, yes, all this is true. And as I said, he's started a Christian rock band which operates out of my basement. I'm obviously too busy trying to make my A.M. radio station profitable to consider all of this too seriously, but apparently it makes Lee happy.

I wish I could say Lee has been easier to live with since coming back, but it's not the case. You may recall old Lee was something of a pain in the posterior, constantly making fun of me, never paying his portion of the rent, and spending most of the day high. It's more of the same now, except he has sworn off drugs, he's too polite for everybody's taste, and he's convinced we're all damned to hell for our behavior. Same ol' Lee, except for he's mostly different.

It may hardly be worth mentioning, I can no longer tell, but Lee has developed an unhealthy fascination with TV's Scott Baio as well. Ever since finding out he was a kind gentlemen with conservative politics, Lee has thought him quite a role model to adopt. And of course, for Lee, that kind of thing naturally leads to obsession and death threats, the usual circumstance in life where you become convinced you're the celebrity and the celebrity himself is an impostor taking your place—we've all been there, I tell Lee, but just because Carroll O'Connor won't take your calls doesn't mean it's your mission mandated by God to kill him. Lighten up, fella, I tell him.

In one ear and out the other, with new Lee. Old Lee at least would have lit himself some doobage and "chilled" for a while, realized he was perhaps getting ramped up about something silly. But new Lee wants to move forward with the "kill Chachi" plan immediately. Honestly, Lee, nobody has time for all this nonsense. I've got X-M radio options to consider, those take up more than half my week alone. Then there's running the radio station, not to mention the five minutes it takes me to write my commune columns for the next two months. If you're jumping out of the closet and dry-clicking your gun every ten minutes, shouting, "Now who's in charge, Charles?" a man will never get anything done.

My first instinct is to ask Lee to move out, but you know as well as I do, I'm not capable of that kind of cruelty. Except for to Camembert. Maybe Girl Elvis can be persuaded to do it for us, she's never thought much of him, I can tell that much. She's already threatened to call the police on him, but I tell her his band's cover of "In the Ghetto" may be bad, but it's hardly illegal. Heck, kids, at this point I might even kill Scott Baio myself just to get on with the world. I don't have time for another caper at this point, I'm stretched way too thin.

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