Drug companies are in the business of selling pills. They want Tommy to take a pill, and they want you to take a pill. So, they try to reduce everything to a pill. “What’s your problem? It doesn’t matter. Here’s the solution. A pill. Just take a pill. There you go. Oh. You don’t have problem? No problem! We have pill for you, too.”
And they’re selling a lot of pills. And people are using a lot of pills.
But alternative medicine is also popular. Some of it's not really alternative medicine, though. But for some reason, we consider it an alternative. Like if you tell people to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and get twenty minutes of exercise and ten minutes of fresh air and sunlight a day, someone will reply, "What is that? Alternative medicine? I'm not into that. I'll take a pill instead."
So I'm not sure what alternative medicine is. But all in all, it’s becoming more popular. And it’s taking business away from your Mercks and your Pfizers. They’re going to have to do something. Pretty soon they’ll offer their own versions of alternative treatments. Like yoga in a pill. “You want some yoga. Take this pill. There you go. There’s your yoga. Ommm. Ommm.” Although I guess the chant, the mantra, will also be a pill. “Ommm should not be taken with sedatives or antidepressants.”
So we’ll have Pfizer yoga. And Merck yoga. And Pfizer ommm. And Merck ommm. Although they’ll probably use names like yogatherenol or isayogafin or ommmatherodox or parasnalinommm. I don’t know how well they’re going to sell, though. A lot of guys go to yoga mainly to stare at women who are in unusual positions. So basically, they’ll have to put some sort of picture on the bottle. Or better yet, it should come with a poster. Pfizer—you should hire me.
Oh—and there’ll probably be air in a pill at some point. “You need air. This pill contains it. Oxygenastifil.” People aren’t even going to breathe anymore. The pills will take care of that. A few decades from now, only 1% of the population is going to actually breathe. Breathing will be like what listening to vinyl records is to us now. As in, “You play records on—what is that—a phonograph? What—you’ve never heard of an iPod?” Only it’ll be, “You breathe air through your nose and mouth? What—you’ve never heard of oxygenastifil? What the hell is wrong with you?”
They probably won’t stop at air. What about thinking? “You use your mind to think? What—you’ve never heard of thinkegenastitherenol?”
And as Western medicine progresses, we end up taking more and more pills. because they keep on introducing more and more pills. I can only imagine what things are going to be like in the year 2100. When you go on vacation, you’ll take a suitcase for your clothes, and another one for your pills. If the airline loses your luggage, you’ll turn into the Tasmanian Devil. “Ah—I need my pills!”
They’ll be tons of psychiatric drugs. Right now, there are a few hundred disorders in the book—but at some point there will be a few billion. They’ll just keep on finding new ones. And if they have to invent a few, so be it. There will be billions of disorders. The average person will have twenty thousand of them, and be on twenty thousand pills. Half of our lives will consist of us just taking pills off of a conveyor belt. We’ll just lie underneath the end of one, and it’ll drop pills in our mouths. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley--are you guys listening to this? 1984? 2084. There’s a novel. Someone write it. I’m not going to do it. I don’t have time. I have pills to take.
How are people going to keep track of all those pills? That’s what I want to know. Pretty soon, that’ll be a main subject school. Math, science, English, history, and pill management. We’ll take E Pluribus Unum off of our money, and replace it with, “Don’t forget to take your pills.” Or maybe there’ll be some iPod iPad whatever for your pills. And Apple will collect the information, and use it to make recommendations. “People who take parasnalinommm, bradpitaophil, celebutrix, and butriselix, also listen to Lady Gaga, watch Michael Douglas movies, read Dostoevsky novels, visit TMZ.com, and should really consider breaking up with their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife.”
Apple and Merck will merge into one company—applegenastimerck—-and they’ll basically determine what we do. So there are some more ideas for 2084. The novel. And the movie. Paramount—you should hire me. Someone should hire me. This entire routine is really just me seeking employment. That’s a side effect of being a nobody in this industry. “Side effects include...”