Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Fast-Forward

I had a marketing professor in college who preached the virtues of The Product Market Matrix. Its goal - as you can probably imagine - is to utilize every possible angle to keep a product viable in the marketplace. My favorite component of the matrix was the one about finding a new use for an existing product, like toothpaste. Toothpaste can be used to remove scratches from watch crystals and cd/dvds, it can be used as an acne treatment, it can be used to polish chrome...in short, there's a lot of shit you can do with toothpaste besides polish your teeth. And recently, I found a new use for Ambien...as a fast forward button for life.


A lot of people claim to believe - mostly in theory I presume - that life is something to be savored, seized, or other otherwise prolonged and while I don't necessarily disagree, the individual days that make up one's life can be a downright bummer every now and again. Like Donald Fagen sings on "The Things I Miss The Most": Days don't really last forever, but it's pretty damn close. Truer words have rarely been spoken. So when I'm having one of those days that can't find its way into my rearview mirror fast enough, I turn to Ambien...sweet, sweet Ambien.


There's something empowering - and a tad bit pathetic - about drawing a line in the sand after a shit-eating day and taking time into your own hands, emerging 12-13 hours later with only a foggy recollection of yesterday's indignities floating around in your head like Steve McQueen at the end of Papillon shaking your fist at the heavens, "I'm still here you bastards." And none of that controlled-release business for me thanks, if I were the type of person who related to being eased in and out of things, I probably wouldn’t be using prescription sleep medications to cope with life. I need the old school, knock-you-out-and-leave-you-feeling-groggy-and-perhaps-a-bit-cheap-and-used-the-next-day original formula. I even have the slogan, "Fast-forward your life. Fast-forward...to Ambien."


Sure, the good folks at Sanofi Aventis might not want to officially endorse this new use of their sleep medication but it's not like that'd be the worst thing a pharmaceutical company has ever done...and do they really want the Lunesta people beating them to the punch? Not to mention, these are hard times we're living in and when the going gets tough, I can't tell you what the tough do because I'm in a nearly comatose state brought on by a couple clicks of the fast-forward button chased down with an ice cold beer.