I remember when Viagra was new. I remember Bob Dole, er—pitching it—not long after he had lost his bid for the Presidency. It was strange enough to have our almost-President dropping figurative trou on national television. And it wasn't one of those ads that you see only a few times—no, Phizer drilled it into the nation's heads day and night for months. It was 1998, and the Viagra revolution had begun.

These ads for the Original Anti-flaccid promised more than increased worldwide turgidity. It promised a brave new world of drug commercial saturation. Most of these ads don't provide any indication of what the drug is for, so you're left to wonder why the hell you'd want to risk that laundry list of possible side effects. They give you images of tastefully dressed, white-toothed smiles, soft-focus handholding through parks, kids on swingsets, and random shots of racially diverse faces grinning assuredly back at you, as if to say, "I'm oh so much better now.

The drug names are usually pretty funny, like Levitra. At least someone in marketing knows his Latin etymology. But they're not quite as funny as the side effects—I never thought I could chuckle at a random reading of ailments. It must be the delivery: About 1.5 to 2X speed, always in soft tones to dull the impact, and always ending with the rarest possible side effect, to leave you with that "rare" notion floating in your head.

More recently, drug companies have revealed a new strategy. It's the Lets Turn Ailments Suffered By Few Into Ailments Feared By Many Movement, or LTASBFIAFBMM. I've seen at *least* 200 instances of the Lamisil commercial. What's Lamisil for? Oh, yellow toenails, basically. The new scourge of the 21st Century. Dry, flaky, yellow toenails that just might...gulp...thicken. Oh, the humanity.

And that IBS with constipation commercial, with about a dozen nice and flat female stomachs on display (with all skin tones present and accounted for, of course). You can't convince me that the number of women out there with IBS warrants the media saturation. I'm not particularly, um...stool-savvy, but I don't believe that there are so many bowel-troubled females out there that hourly commercials are required to spread the word about it.

The increase in patient requests for inquiries about particular drugs must be increasing exponentially. It used to be that you tell your doctor about some symptoms, your doctors checks this or that, and then a medicine is prescribed, if any. Now it's, Hey Doc, I have these yellow toenails. Got any Lamisil?

Isn't this a weebit strange?