What Drives Us? 08/07/26

When I was in my 30’s we used to visit my wife’s parents in Florida. Every morning her dad would sit down with a grapefruit, and about six or seven amber bottles of medications. We now have discovered that grapefruit renders your Lipitor ineffective, but back then, who knew? I would think, I’ll never have that many bottles of pills when I get older. Well Max, I’ve got you beat (a battle I had no interest in winning). 7 pills in the morning and 3 more at night. With these medications come instructions. Don’t take your Lipitor when you take a stomach acid reducer, so Lipitor at night, Prilosec in the morning. I then asked a doctor friend is it okay to keep taking Prilosec (omeprazole) every morning, and he said yes, but maybe add a probiotic. And then I also take a gummy with prebiotics. Oh, and wait 30 minutes after the GLP 1 and another 30 minutes after the aforementioned Prilosec. Now that translates into waiting a full hour before eating breakfast, which no longer features grapefruit. Sigh. Ain’t it fun getting older? At least there’s a comic in the process.

Which brings us to our other comic this week about self-driving cars. It is no longer shocking to see a car driving down the street or highway with nobody in the front seat. I know many people are welcoming this technology that allows us to go places without having to drive. I can see the benefits of this (like getting a ride when you had too much to drink) but hey, I like to drive. I’ve read about a future in which nobody has a car. You just call one up on your phone and it comes to get you. The only fun I can see in that is freaking people out when they look into the car you’re sitting in. People do all sorts of dumb stuff while driving. Eating, chatting on the phone, answering text messages, putting on eye makeup, you name it. There’s a famous scene in which Jimmy Kimmel put his Aunt Chippy into a driverless Waymo in order to take her home from his show. The “driver” got out of the car to put her bags in the car and then walked away. As the car pulled out, Aunt Chippy said, “Wait there’s no driver!!!” Pretty funny. Unless you are Aunt Chippy.

So that’s it for this week, the hour is up after my first two morning pills so I can now eat breakfast. And take more pills. See ya next week,

Andy and John