Suffer the Little Reader

I managed to make it through one day without blogging about my cats and that will have to suffice for now, because I need to tell you that Gus is intent on doing me grievous bodily harm. Rewind to a few days ago. I'm sitting on the floor in my bedroom, obsessively picking cat litter off the carpet and tossing it into the wastebasket, whereupon said pieces of litter encounter a pretzel bag and make a little flk.

Because he has to be involved in everything at all times or the earth will spin off its axis, Gus strides over to investigate. I toss a few more pieces of litter, they hit the pretzel bag and flk startles Gus so badly he jumps straight up, the way kittens do, forcing my nose up into my frontal lobe. I hear a very definite crack, see stars and wail. In a few moments, however, my shnozz seems no worse for the wear and I go about my business.

Last night, I'm leaning over, putting in a DVD (Hot Fuzz). Gus, needing to check out the scene, walks under my nose. I bend down to kiss his back. The mmk kissing sound startles him so badly, he jumps straight up into my nose. I hear a very definite crack, see stars and wail. Only this time my nose hurts all night and all day today. And it hurts to wear glasses.

So reader, I ask you: did my kitten break my nose?


Innocent kitten or cold-blooded killer? You be the judge.

Major celebuspawn alerts for Gwen Stefani, maybe Angelina Jolie, and Katie Holmes. Has J.Lo birthed the babies? No one's saying for sure but it sure seems that way. Stay up to date with FameCrawler.

On a more serious note, two interesting articles today about one of favorite spleen-venting topics, the pharmaceutical industry. Though naturally not admitting any wrongding, Lilly is now in settlement talks with the federal government concerning its marketing of Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic and their best selling drug--$4.8 billion in 2007 alone. Apparently, Lilly created a marketing campaign aimed at primary care doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for age-related dementia, though the drug is not FDA approved for such use. If the case is settled for the reported $1 billion, it will be the largest settlement regarding promotion of a drug.

This one is a real corker. Apparently a doctor, not unlike this doctor, had his bread buttered on both sides and wasn't sure which side to let hit the floor. He was both a participant in a peer review for the New England Journal of Medicine and a paid consultant for GlaxoSmithKline, which put him in a bind when he was asked to review an article critical of the now black-boxed Glaxo diabetes drug Avandia. So this doctor participates in the peer review, but also faxes the article to Glaxo. Can I get an oy vey? Read the full article here.

And this dear reader is what Howard Brody, author of Hooked means by a firewall needed between science and industry.