I am sick to death of all these new medical conditions that the pharmaceutical companies are making up so they can sell us new drugs. They take some normal human condition and decide it’s an illness, create a drug to “cure” it and whammo, a whole new industry is born.My latest medical pet peeve? Restless Leg Syndrome. What the hell? Okay, maybe there are some people who aren’t sleeping at night somewhere and are busy flapping away in their beds. Well, guess what? I’ve been tapping and flapping and twitching my leg for years. When I sit, I twitch. When I go to bed I flap my leg for a while, I’ve been doing it for 47 years. And you know what happens when I flap my leg? It moves! Oh, the horror of it! And the sheets and covers move, too! Oh, the agony!

For pity’s sake, I’m just a twitchy person. Now they’re telling me I’m diseased. What crap. I got a cure for Restless Leg Syndrome, it’s called Ignoring It. So I twitch. So what? Now it’s a syndrome? Now I’m handicapped? What a load of crap.

Here’s the real story: a drug company manufactures some new blood pressure medication. They notice in the drug trials that the drug has a side effect that makes people stare at the wall. Dr. Scam Artist says to his lab flunky, “Hey, I got an idea. You know how the human eye works? It has to move a lot, right? To do its job. Let’s make it a disease. Restless Eye Syndrome. We give people this pill, they stare at a wall, they’re cured! We’ll make millions! Deploy the marketing team!” I can hear the radio ads now. Do you scan the shelves at a grocery store and have difficulty finding the product you’re searching for? You may have Restless Eye Syndrome. Try Eye-Z, the latest drug from Ripoff Labs. Ka-ching!

It’s clear that the drug companies are just capitalizing on this idiotic new trend of people labeling themselves by their conditions or diseases. I overheard some woman in the store the other day on her cellphone going on about being bi-polar, she’s a child of an alcoholic, she’s a food addict. Most of these syndromes were made up by doctors because stupid people came into their offices who didn’t want to take responsibility for their self-destructive behaviors, so they went in and got a label, got a jar of pills and suddenly they had an excuse to be self-centered, fat and abusive. I get to yell at you—I have anger issues. I get to eat a cake and feel sorry for myself— I’m a food addict. I got another name for these people: WHINERS.

Not that I don’t have sympathy for those suffering from true mental disorders and trauma. I’ve had many friends who used their diagnoses to stop their self-destructive behaviors. But mostly I know people who love to wallow in their made-up conditions and use them as an excuse to further destroy themselves and those around them. It’s these morons I have ZERO sympathy for.

I love the food addict BS. For cryin’ out loud, if you don’t eat, you die. Hello? We are all food “addicts”, for God’s sake, if we weren’t we’d be supermodels.

Problem is, if you don’t play the new game of identifying yourself by your conditions or syndromes, someone will come along and do the job for you. I like to walk. Oh, you’re a Walk Addict. I watched too much TV last night. You’re a TV Addict! Basically, anything we like too much is an addiction, anything we don’t like to do is a syndrome or a disorder. Yeah, I got a “syndrome”, it’s called “Sick of all the BS” syndrome.

I took some stupid medical questionnaire recently and they asked: do you drink daily? Well, of course, I do. I could hear the Beer Police revving up their engines and starting toward my house. Do you sometimes “binge” drink? (Three or more drinks at a sitting.) Of course. Why not? Oh, you are an alcoholic! You must be medicated! Who comes up with this crap? I’ll tell you who, someone who is trying to sell a pill or a week at some expensive rehab facility.

Okay, for sure there are people who drink too much, eat too much, smoke too much and hurt themselves and those closest to them. These are the idiots who are ruining it for the rest of us. Just because there are jerks out there who get tanked, get in their car and drive through their living room window, suddenly, I’m an alcoholic because I drank three beers? What crap!

I have had a parade of people in my life who keep trying to label me because I like to drink. My biggest offense seems to be that I enjoy it. Because I take responsibility for the fact that I like drinking and I admit it, that makes me a dangerous and out-of-control whacko in DENIAL. I must be stopped! Someone come medicate me! Because beer is EVIL. No, instead of drinking a couple beers to relax in the evenings, I’m supposed to take some stupid pharmaceutical drug that will make my ear hair grow and will make my vision blurry and will make rational thinking nearly impossible, but it will be the RIGHT way to medicate myself because we all know that anyone who drinks three beers is an alcoholic! Why? Because the drug companies say so! Just say yes to corporate drugs!

I got a new condition for ya. It’s called Stupidity. And this whole bloody planet suffers from it and guess what? There is no cure!

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a beer and watch my leg twitch. But I won’t be taking any pills for it. But I am going to label myself. Just call me Twitchy.

©2007, Janet Periat

It has occurred to me lately that there is a growing problem in our society. Lack of common sense. Advertisers help the deluded by providing answers of their own. Which are always motivated more by greed than by hard science. Yet college educated friends of mine continually shock me by purporting claims that their weight gain is caused by a lack of some chemical, not because they ate an entire cheesecake for dinner. Or that their car broke down not because of lack of maintenance, but because the moon was in Leo. It is to these deluded masses that I dedicate the following column.

Number One: It’s Almost Always Your Fault
“I got a blow out on the Bay Bridge! Out of nowhere, my tire exploded! So what if there was no tread left on the tire, it still shouldn’t blow like that. Why do things like this always happen to me?” Uh-huh. Gee, I can’t imagine.

Number Two: Diets Don’t Work
Eating a balanced diet and getting regular exercise are the only ways to lose weight. This is the most simple concept to grasp, yet millions of people spend millions of dollars per year on magic pills, magic vibrating belts and wacky diets avoiding this basic, simple truth. Which is, if your calorie intake is higher than calories burned, you gain weight! Which pisses me off. I was sure my Beer ‘N Pringles Diet was gonna work.

Number Three: Buying Something Will Not Give You Self Esteem
Or Get You More Sex
Unless you are buying a date with a prostitute.

Number Four: Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Only Work
For The Person Who Invents The Get-Rich-Quick Scheme
Have you heard about my new Beer ‘N Pringles Diet? If you send me $149.95, I can show you how you can sell this simple principle to all your fat friends and make as much money as that Atkins guy. Guaranteed!

Number Five: Doing It Yourself Does Not Save Money or Time
Unless you are a licensed carpenter. Which most people are not. Which is why Home Depot was invented. As a trap for the deluded. Most everyone who passes through Home Depot’s door is in denial. These poor slobs actually believe they will simply walk in, pick up the replacement window for their home, go home, read a few pages out of a home improvement manual, put in the window and be watching the game by four. This is not what happens.

First, there is no one working at Home Depot with a brain cell. If they do have a brain cell, they don’t speak English. So, the homeowner wanders the vast aisles of the store, back and forth, for hours. After fifty trips up and down the same aisle, they have the screws they need, but not the window. Finally, after the hundredth trip down the same aisle, they get their window, the screws, the wood and wait in line for a half an hour behind seven other deluded homeowners. They go home and stare at the old window they want to replace. They realize that they bought the wrong size window. They head back to Home Depot. Finally, at three in the afternoon, they are home with the right window, but realize that they don’t have enough wood. They head back to Home Depot.

Once they have all the materials in place, they realize the game has started. So they attempt to take out the old window while watching the game. After much frustration and swearing, they manage to remove the window and a significant part of the wall in the process. This is when they discover the termite damage. So for a week, while they wait for the exterminator, they have a huge hole in their bedroom wall and their wife threatens divorce. Two months later, the exterminator, contractor and painter have been to the house and the owner finally has a new window in his bedroom. And yes, he did it himself. He made all the phone calls and wrote out the checks—all by himself.

Number Six: There Are No Conspiracies
The appearance of conspiracy is caused by a lack of competence. Period. All dark helicopters look black against a blue sky. There is no Cabal. The government has no idea what the hell it’s doing. Conspiracy requires someone to be in control. The only thing more frightening than a conspiracy is the reality that no one knows what’s going on.

Number Seven: The Holidays Only Bring Joy To Retailers and Hallmark
Actually, Hallmark is responsible for inventing the Christmas card giving tradition. They invented Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Secretary’s Day. They are responsible for the guilt. They are run by the Cabal. Okay, none of the above is true, but you believed it for a minute, didn’t you?

Number Eight: People Only Hear What They Want
“I’m on the Atkins diet. So basically, I eat bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Which means they ignored the part that says along with their bacon, they also needed to eat a buncha vegetables and a small portion of complex carbohydrates. No, they went right for the bacon. Which is why my Beer ‘N Pringles Diet is going to be a hot seller. Come on, folks, get in on the ground floor. We’re going to make millions!

Number Nine: People Believe What They Are Told Even If It Makes No Sense
Eating all your meals at Subway will make you lose weight. Putting all your debt on credit cards will get you out of debt. Getting surgery will make you feel young. Bombing the hell out of another country makes us safer. Giving Janet all your money will make you richer. (And in return, you’ll get your own Beer ‘N Pringles Diet Plan franchise!)

Number Ten: No One Listens To Anyone About Anything
Our inner mind patter is so loud, it’s amazing we can comprehend the existence of others. Mostly as others talk, we chatter inside our own heads. “Oh, yes, that reminds me of a story…” And pretty soon you’re lost in your own thoughts and the person says, “What do you think?” And you stand there, thinking, “Oh crap. I don’t want this person to think that I wasn’t listening to them. I don’t want to be rude.” So you lie. “Great concept,” you venture. “Cremating my mother is a great concept?” Oops.

I understand why people want easy answers. It’s easy to see why anyone would want to eat bacon to lose weight. It tastes better than celery. I just wish my Beer ‘N Pringles diet worked. I’d have the body of a supermodel by now if it did.
©2007, Janet Periat

Hey there!

Okay, my plan for this Blog Thingy is to post stuff once a week, on Friday nights, Saturday if I am swamped. I would like to post twice a week and we’ll see how that goes. My monthly columns will appear right around the beginning of the month.

Right now I’m doing a lot of posts, so that there’s actually something here to read. Soon, I’ll get into a regular rhythm with this thingy. You’ll be seeing an actual list under Links and all kinds of stuff will be added to this as I have time. Wheee!

So stay tuned, you never know what I’ll post here, but hopefully, you’ll find it interesting.

Thanks for looking!

Hugs, Janet

 Okay, if you read Janet’s Seven Signs of the Apocalypse, this is the column that will be appearing in the Education Center of St. Louis’s workbook for pastors and religious people… I suppose it could be interpreted as having something to do with actual religion, but that was not my intent…

You can also find this piece in my book: Confessions of a Pink-Haired Lunatic.

Used to be people prayed to God to save their crops so they could feed their kids. They’d pray to God for a cure for their ailments. They’d pray to God to bless their family members to make their lives a bit easier. Nowadays, most people see God as a giant vending machine. Please God, I need that raise. Please God, I need that contract. Please God, I need that huge paycheck. Please God, let me win the Lottery. If you took a poll of what people pray for, I think you’d find that eighty-five percent is devoted to asking God for more money. Why? So people can buy themselves more junk. If God really exists, I’m sure He/She is tired of being the Heavenly version of Amazon.com.

Junk is the new religion. The coveting of junk, the anticipation of buying the new junk, the showing off of the new junk. Junk, junk, junk, that is what our entire world is now all about. The religion is spreading faster than Mormonism. Now India and China are coming online and you know what? They want everything, too. New cell phones, cars, jewelry, whatever is on TV is what the global market wants. And they want it NOW.

Most of us now have more debt than assets. We all have huge balances on our credit cards. Savings is at an all-time low. Some of it is due to rising medical costs, rising housing costs and rising education costs. But mostly it is due to the Wants. Or the Have-to-Haves. Most of our debt can be seen on the shelves of our homes and in our garages. Does it really make sense to saddle ourselves with debt so we can have a vintage Yugo, The Clapper, The George Foreman Grill and a bunch of Pez dispensers?

I know of what I speak. My name is Janet and I’ve been Junk Addict my entire life. I still have twenty thousand in debt due to my addiction. My downfall has always been toys. Like, toy toys. Not Porches and Cartier watches, actual toys. I have a garage full of them, my shelves are full, my drawers are full. When I try to cull the stuff, all I end up doing is going, “Oooo, cool, look at this! I forgot I bought this! This is so cool!” Cool my ass, it’s all crap. And I’m stuck with it.

None of my belongings have ever really made me happy. Maybe for the ten minutes I’m considering buying it. Certainly the purchase is exciting. Taking it home is pretty exhilarating, but the day after, the thing I just bought is now used. I played with it. I showed it to friends. Then I stuck it on a shelf. Where now it gathers dust. And all for what? What do I have to show for my hard-earned money? A chunk of plastic in the form of Ozzy Osbourne that sits there on a shelf taunting me. Dust me. Pack me. Do something with me. It’s ridiculous.

Everything you bring into your life becomes a responsibility. You can’t just buy something and be done with it. Everything you buy requires time. Time to deal with it, time to read the manual, time to put batteries in it, time to maintain it, time to fix it, time to clean it, time to organize it with all the other crap. Time that could be spent hiking, playing music, doing art projects, hanging out with friends is spent dealing with junk. Not only do you get in financial debt from the acquisition of junk, you end up with time debt as well.

A prime example of the above is our new pinball machine. What a NIGHTMARE. I won’t bore you with the details. Well, I would bore you with the details, but that was seven hundred extra words. To put it simply, our new acquisition took countless phone calls, countless hours of stress and toil, all for the privilege of owning a four hundred pound, money-sucking electronic project. What started as a prime acquisition, the crowning piece of cool stuff in my living room, ended up being a four hundred pound albatross around our necks. Even though I still think it’s cool and I play it regularly… What the HELL was I thinking?

Which brings up the most important point of this new religion of Consumerism. Religion is supposed to make you happier. The new religion of Consumerism only brings us misery. So you manage to get the new cell phone and are the envy of the entire office. Well, enjoy your fifteen minutes of gloating because Bob in the next cubicle will get an even newer model before you know it. And then you’re just like everyone else. You’ve got the old cell phone, the old Mercedes, the old pinball machine. There is no way to keep up with the manufacturers. Or the Joneses. Every week, some new model comes out and your stuff becomes obsolete and out of fashion. Most of us have given the old stuff to the thrift store before we’re even done paying for it.

I think there’s an ingrained, hard-wired need to accumulate stuff in all of us. Take robins for example. Robins collect shiny things for their nests. They don’t need the shiny things, but they sure like them. I think our current culture is amplifying this need and turning it into a dangerous obsession. You don’t see robins getting into debt to other birds so they can have all the new cool stuff in their nests. They settle for things that have been discarded. They only collect things they can carry in their beaks. You don’t see robins trying to haul a pinball machine forty feet up a tree. No, I think the constant bombardment of advertisements has brainwashed all of us into feeling inadequate. The only way to assuage our emptiness is to fill it full of consumer goods. I mean, who has a freakin’ inherent need to collect Elvis memorabilia? What part of our DNA tells us that we need porcelain frogs? Or Franklin Mint eggs?

A couple generations ago, the Church was the center of people’s social life. Now it’s the mall. We’ve become a secular religion of shoppers. Future generations may uncover old Targets, Wal-Marts and Frys and think them to be old iconic symbols of our religion. Old places of worship. And they would be correct. I picture the masses of the world, praying to Steve Jobs in Cupertino to bring forth cooler iPods and iMacs.

The meaning of life should not be about Pez dispensers. It should be about our relationships with others and creative endeavors that celebrate our uniqueness. We should be worshipping the Earth and God, not our possessions. Our lives should not be consumed with consuming.

Easy for me to say. The robin in me, however, still wants more shiny things.
©2006, Janet Periat

For those of you with subscriptions to newspapers and newsmagazines, I am going to save you money and time. The following column sums up the content of EVERY newspaper and newsmagazine I’ve ever read. I am so sick of the trite, repetitive behaviors of my fellow humans, I can’t tell you. Well, actually, I just did.

Anyway, here are your daily headlines. No expiration date. No publishing date.

Evangelical Preacher (or Republican Senator) Caught Having Sex With A Male Prostitute

Or a young girl. Or a young boy. Uh, huh. Ashes, ashes, they all fall down. How many of these guys are there? There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of closet homosexual preachers and senators. They are always conservative, have large families and preach against the evils of homosexuality. These are the kinkiest bastards in the universe. I want to know where they all come from. Astounding how many in a year get exposed. Or expose themselves. At least they give us great quotes like “I have a wide stance.”

Toxic Spill Destroys Natural Habitat

When I was a child, I honestly didn’t expect to see ten years old. That Duck and Cover Nuclear Attack Drill crap was terrifying. Even as a kid you knew this BS about ducking under your desk would not stop your ass from frying if a nuke was dropped on you or nearby. Add to that brown skies (they have actually cleaned up a lot since I was a kid) and all the DDT news and Red Dye Number Two cancer scare stuff, I was a paranoid kid. And my daily dose of news has kept this paranoia at a pretty constant level ever since. I’m sorta attached to humans. I hope we get the lesson before it’s our natural habitat the toxic spill destroys.

Taxes on the Poor Increase, Rich People Getting Richer

Welcome to Earth. Since the dawn of civilization, those in power got more. More money, more food, more sex partners, more land, more privileges. Get over it. It’s the way it is. I will never stop the fight for equality, but I won’t exhaust myself. But I will stop being surprised.

Tainted Carrots Kill Babies! Car Seats Kills Babies! Toys Toxic To Babies!

What is up with all these products killing babies? Everyday some manufacturer gets caught selling products for infants that are either lethal, dangerous or inferior. Remember when Gerber got caught putting sugar water in cans marked “Apple Juice” instead of apple juice? Babies seem to be high on the list of targets. Manufacturers are like: hey, it’s a baby. They can’t talk. They can’t say, “Hey Mom, this apple juice tastes like crap. It’s freakin’ sugar water here.” No one will find out. This has to be high up on the list of Most Heinously Slimy Acts. If there is a Hell, people endangering the health of babies in return for higher profits are buying one-way tickets to the Hot Zone.

Incurable Killer Disease Is Spreading

Yes, yes, we’re all about to die. Remember, that’s the most important message from the news: we are all about to DIE. For pity’s sake, are we a planet of drama queens or what?

Teen Kills 12-Year-Old Over Gum Machine Prize

Or because he was walking too slowly. Or because the victim looked like someone they didn’t like. Or to score points with a gang. Makes no sense. I assume its some mechanism that helps maintain the human population. I would rather see birth control do this job.

City Councilmen Accuse Each Other Of Wrongdoing

Or of stealing each other’s campaign signs. Lying to get votes. Smearing their reputation. Blah, blah, blah. What freakin’ morons. Children in adult costumes. Most people who want power shouldn’t be allowed to have it.

Endangered Animal Taken Off Endangered Species List

Hunters salivate! Corruption, corruption and more corruption. Who knows what species are endangered anymore? At the rate we’re destroying the Earth, I’d say, uh, ALL OF THEM. But in our government, you have to bribe or buy someone to get or keep an animal protected. Darwin’s theory missed the mark: in the future it will be Survival of The Most Popular. Only the cutest animals will survive.

Middle East On Verge Of War

Wake up, people! The morons in the Middle East have been at war since the dawn of civilization (which, ironically, is where the dawn of civilization happened). And they will be at war until the end of civilization in the year 156,666,788. Give or take a few millennia. If people are still around. Which at this rate, is a long shot. (But I have great hopes.)

Corruption At the White House

Get the defibrillator, I am so shocked. My…(sob) leaders… are taking advantage of me? Using my tax dollars to line the pockets of their friends? No, it can’t be! Horrors! I feel so betrayed! So… why is this news? Show me a president who hasn’t taken advantage of his position and now that would be news.

Volunteers Help Save Neighborhood

At the very bottom of the page, once in awhile you get these kinds of stories. I would like to see more of these and less of the above, boring, repetitive crap they fling at us daily. There is a whole lot of cool stuff going on that we don’t hear about. Tons of great stories about people helping each other that rarely make it to the news. That whole “if it bleeds, it leads,” stuff. Yeah, and here I am, Miss Preacher, and what do I watch? Freakin’ Court TV. Forensic Files. And the evening news.

Okay, okay, so I’m hopeless. I’m addicted to my newspaper, Newsweek and Time. Not to mention 24 and all those explody action movies. Why, you may ask, since I seem to loathe all this craziness so much? I got two words for you: Duck and Cover.

©2007, Janet Periat