Medication Nation

Went to the emergency room this afternoon, because I thought my nectarine was trying to kill me. Turns out what I thought was a piece of nectarine lodged in my throat was a big scratch on my esophagus from a tiny shard of the pit. These two things apparently feel exactly the same. Anyway. The triage nurse asked me, on a scale of 1-10, how much pain was I feeling. I told him zero; I was just exceedingly uncomfortable. He wrote it down on my chart. The nurse who treated me in the observation room asked how painful my condition was. I told him not at all, and he wrote that down on my chart. The doctor came in, looked at my chart, asked me what kind of pain I was in, and I told him none. He wrote it down. Later, as he's discharging me, the doctor hands me a prescription for Vicodin. I told him I didn't need it, because (again) I wasn't in any pain. He said to take it anyway just in case.

I remember how, even 10-15 years ago, it took a lot of convincing to get a doctor to prescribe anything, let alone a powerful painkiller. Now I have a doctor pushing narcotics on me over my protestations. Is this one reason why half of all Americans are on prescription drugs and why addiction to prescription painkillers is a big problem? Yes, and it's insane, and it must confuse the heck out of kids who are supposed to understand why there is a War on (Some) Drugs^TM.

Licious Way to Live

These days, when everything is racist, I've found an image that causes me great confusion:



Is this picture racist? Tolerant? Inclusive? Color blind? Black and white? Or just a couple of kids holding glasses of milk? Should Darigold be praised or protested? Should we buy their milk or boycott their products? Are they suggesting racial/gender harmony with their checkerboard white/chocolate girl/boy milk montage? Or are they suggesting that interracial relationships are a cold product of societal pasteurization?

And why is the boy black while the girl is white? Are they suggesting that black men will be stealing all our white women? After all, the girl is holding the chocolate milk, while the boy is holding the white milk. Are they suggesting that our children drink forbidden milk?

Maybe the milk/skin combinations are suggesting racial preferences, since, obviously, only an idiot would prefer white milk to chocolate, except that the white kid got the chocolate milk. Maybe the black kid got white milk to show how African Americans are treated as second class citizens. Would the picture be more or less racist if the kids were holding milk of their own color? What if the boy was white and the girl black?

Also, where are Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, etc? What kind of milk do these under-represented flavors drink? Now I'm really confused. Liberal or conservative, progressive or the opposite, please help!!!