BREAKTHROUGH IN MEDICAL SCIENCE: A NEW DISEASE CREATED OUT OF THIN AIR!

This just in from the world of medicine: There's a dreaded new disease on the block, folks, one threatening at least a quarter of working people. It's called Shift Work Disorder, that condition that affects the minds, bodies and general welfare of people who work either the night shift, or worse yet, rotating work schedules. Normal reactions (basically, getting tired) to irregular schedules seems like a huge "Du-uh!" to you and I, but the reality is that this frightening plague has been striking countless victims right under our noses! Who knew there was an actual disease involved in this very commonplace work schedule?

The people at Worldwide Megatitangiant Pharmaceutical Corporation Unlimited, that's who! Why cure those nasty diseases like cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis when you can make up your own? Control them too, with some handy-dandy powerful drugs concocted especially to combat Shift Work Disorder by Megatitangiant. It's called Super-Cognizine Plus and comes in Non-Drowsy or I'll Sleep Next Week Formula for those patients whose jobs require them to be extremely alert, like train engineers, medical personnel or knife throwers in the circus.

That's the beauty of it: cancer and all those other diseases are really complex, and a lot of money gets wasted trying to find elusive cures. To avoid this drain on the Executive Bonus Fund (the EBF), pharmaceutical executives invent a new disease and act all Jonas Salk when they announce both the disease and the maintenance drug all at once! This way the public thinks drug companies want to cure diseases and make people well. How would they make any dough that way? Now that they've conquered Shift Work Disorder with amphetamines, scientists at Megatitangiant are hard at work finding relief for these future diseases:

Connective Obsessive Disorder (C.O.D.): Millions of Americans suffer from this debilitating disease, an involuntary obsession be in instant communication with someone, only if that person is nowhere near them. Sufferers of C.O.D. ignore anyone who is physically present in order to text, tweet or call someone else. Symptoms include hand cramps, distraction, and eventually, severe loneliness when a;; your friends get tired of getting dissed. Researchers at Megatitangiant are testing a sedative-based tablet to slow their involuntary spastic reflexes down long enough to notice there's real people to talk to right in front of them.

Greed Obsessive Disorder (G.O.D.): Megatitangiant is only weeks away from announcing this exciting new disease, along with the medicine that does not quite cure, but controls it, assuring a lifetime of satisfied customers. This affliction has reached epidemic proportions among wealthy corporate leaders, sort of the sickle-cell anemia of white guys in expensive suits. G.O.D. sufferers are often considered healthy, well-adjusted individuals, to outward appearances successful and content. Unfortunately, not so much for them as for the rest of us, Greed Obsessive Disorder drives these people to steal fortunes and to take unimaginably huge gambles with other people's money. The medicine, called Amassoff, will not be marketed directly to G.O.D. victims, who generally feel there is nothing wrong with them, but instead to their secretaries, personal assistants or whoever else makes their coffee in the morning and prepares their meals. Highly addictive, soon the CEOs themselves will be seeking Amassoff on their own. While their greed will still be intact, severe addiction issues will soon cost them their jobs, with the hope that their replacements will be free of G.O.D. issues.

Also in the experimental stages at Megatitangiant Research Laboratories are the diseases Flicker Tic Syndrone (FTS), an inability to stop pressing the buttons on the TV remote for longer than 12 seconds, iMAC Degeneration Disease (iDD), describing the compulsion to discard your expensive cell phone, computer or iPad every six weeks when Steve Jobs introduces a newer model, making iDD victims feel like they are driving a Model T Ford, and finally Drones Disease (DD), that nagging affliction caused by overexposure to Cable TV News Commentators, causing sufferers to believe that, just like their TV hereos, they are now experts on everything you can think of and the disturbing belief that if they repeat something completely absurd enough times in a row, that it becomes fact. Like the G.O.D. medicine, the DD placebo, um, that is... maintenance drug, will not be marketed directly to patients, but to those around them who want to see them get better, and maybe shut the fuck up once in a while.