News Archives - Yolanda Hamilton - 2005
See also: Devon Hamilton  Neil Winters

A Family Affair

December 28, 2005
by Brent Kellogg

Just once can't someone in Genoa City get a job on their own without having to kiss someone's ass? I know what they say, I know that in order to get ahead in today's world it's not what you know, but who you know and in Sharon Newman's case and many of the women in this godforsaken city it's who you blow, but Christ, whatever happened to self esteem? Whatever happened to actually going out and finding a job on your own and feeling good about it?

Why did Sharon take it upon herself this week to help Yolanda Hamilton get a job at Newman Enterprises? Does she even know Yolanda? Does she not know that Yolanda was a dope smoking crackhead? Sure, one look at Yolanda's bleached teeth and you'd never know she did Meth half her life. One look at that pretty face that makes real Meth users say, "Why can't I use Meth and look like that?" and it's apparent Yolanda is fully recovered. She rid her body of the toxic chemicals almost as fast as Lauren Fenmore-Baldwin did and now she's ready for the big time.

Never mind that Yolanda has no skills or experience to speak of, unless you count the years she laid on her back and gave out sexual favors to the drug dealers, her son helped erect a shrine to Sharon's daughter and she herself erected a mini-shrine of sorts to Lauren Fenmore who somehow, in the midst of the Tom Fisher trauma, approved Yolanda for a part-time job at Fenmore Little Shop of Horrors.

Because the mini-shrine so impressed Sharon - who was in the shop this day to exchange a Christmas gift - she inquired as to whether Yolanda might want a job at Newman Enterprises when her gig at the horror shop is up in a week.

Does an addict want a fix? Of course Yolanda wants a fancy job like the one Sharon got, but please, no mailroom. Something where I can come and go as I please and takeoff from work for weeks at a time and quit and be re-hired numerous times should it be desired. But why, Yolanda needed to know. Why would Sharon want to do such a nice thing for someone she doesn't know?

But Sharon said she does know Yolanda, well, that is, her son knows a friend of Yolanda's son who helped erect a shrine to her dead daughter or some lame connection like that and you know we idol worshipers gotta stick together. Thus, for Yolanda's praying before the great Lauren Fenmore she was immediately tossed a Newman bone. Sharon will look around for a job Yolanda might fit into and which might conveniently place Yolanda closer to Newman slave Neil Winters who, it seems, is next in line to get out of line even though the last time he cheated on his wife Neil said he'd learned his lesson and would never do it again.

Only they always do it again. They can't help themselves. They thump their Bibles, praise the importance of family and hack like born again Christians as they fornicate their neighbor's wife/husband or, in Neil's case, his adopted son's mother. Oh, how sweet that will be when not only is Brad Carlton putting his incestuous pork to the Newman girls, and Nick Newman is doing the mother of the boy his adopted daughter secretly pined for and eventually died for, Neil nails Yolanda. And when Neil's wife finds out, as wives always do, the door will be opened for Dru Winters to start sleeping around again too.

It's been said that guys like Brad, and women like Sharon are sick; that they're sexual deviants and hypocrites and disgusting and worship idols. Adultery and sex outside marriage and with family members in Genoa City is widely accepted even as those participating in it speak out on the danger of AIDS and give speeches on the proper use of condoms. They warn their teenage children that sex is deadly and icky and should be avoided completely if not somehow surgically eradicated, and if they really must indulge to at least whip out the Bible and be sure to avoid the porn under daddy's bed and demonic heathen sluts like Sharon and Victoria Newman.

These insidious warnings have absolutely zero effect on curbing teen sexual appetites and, if anything, actually induce teens to have more sex. It's an outcome the likes of which we have all seen a thousand times before and for which we all can already preemptively guess the results, and that makes any moderately enlightened or sexually aware or even slightly educated human anywhere on the planet only say, well, duh. After all, hormones have always trumped uptight conservative dogma. Sex and testosterone and raw human heat always laugh in the face of anyone that attempts to reject it. Just ask all those gay priests in the seminary, shuffling between beds every night, just after lights-out.

Fine, so give Yolanda a job. Give her a big office with a secretary. It doesn't matter that she's only good for sex. Look at Sharon. Look at Nick. Look at Brad or almost anyone working at Newman Enterprises. Outside Victor Newman, they all got where they are today because of sex. The body is a disgusting shameful vehicle and Genoa City is an exploitable sandbox to be abused at will and life is merely miserable purgatory where they scratch and claw for money and power and survival while eagerly awaiting ... what was it again? Oh right. The Second Coming. The day when they can become a family again.

The Face of Reality

December 14, 2005
by Brent Kellogg

This is the inherent joy of the Winters clan. The lesson we can all learn and value and take with us along our journey through life: the Winters, so dysfunctional. Do not be like them. I mean, think about it. From the day Dru Winters was plucked off the street by Nathan Hastings, taught how to read and write and stop picking pockets, she's seen nothing but chaos.

When she couldn't get Nathan interested in her sexually, Dru turned to Neil Winters. A graduate from Stanford, Neil was the token black at Newman Enterprises. He had the ear - and maybe more - of CEO Victor Newman and quickly became Victor's fist-pumping right-hand man. Neil liked his women in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant but try as he might, couldn't get Dru pregnant.

Then one day Dru caught a cold. Dr. Olivia Winters, known as the butcher of Genoa City, stopped by the wooden box her sister called home to give Dru a bottle of cold medication she'd taken from the hospital pharmacy without a prescription. Uninformed, Dru gulped the meds like a drunk guzzles Ripple and was flying high when Neil's half-brother, half-nitwit Malfunction Winters dropped in. Thinking Dru was horny and wanted his hot body, Malfunction put the pork to her as a zonked-out Dru had delusions of getting it on with Neil.

When Dru's belly began to swell Neil was happier than a priest in a boy's dormitory. When Lily Winters was born he cooed and called the baby "Boo Boo Bear". The joy of birth was cut short, however. When Dru announced she wanted to be a career woman, when she said she wasn't about to give up her modeling job and pretty much understood the odds of an uneducated woman getting ahead in this world and not stuck for life as a $5 counterperson at McDonald's are slim to none, Neil had a fit.

Had the times been different, had Neil been able to get away with chaining Dru to the stove, he would have. The male dominance got so bad Dru packed up her baby and flew for Paris where for years she lived the good life without Neil and was better off for it

Then, like so many before her, Dru made the mistake of returning to Genoa City. She felt that because Lily had become a spoiled brat the now teenage girl needed a father figure and what better than the biological father. Only Neil wasn't the real dad. Dru knew it. Olivia knew it. Almost everyone knew it except Neil and Malfunction. And it was written that those who knew the truth were to forget. They were told that Dru never had sex with Malfunction. Neil was, and always will be, Lily's dad.

Dru had a role model for Lily in the form of Dr. Wes Carter. A psychiatrist, Wes had a thriving practice in Paris. He made big bucks and Dru happy. Lily was happy too. She liked Wes so much she wanted Dru to marry him so that they could become a family. But Dru wasn't satisfied. She felt that Neil, so many years after the fact, so totally a stranger who hadn't seen his daughter since birth, could better knock some sense into Lily.

In her rush Dru forgot to call ahead. She didn't think to get a feel for the lay of the land. Had she only known Neil was a drunk and having sex with an Olive Pit barmaid she might have changed her mind. From the moment she set foot in Genoa City and into the dark, smelly cave her Aunt Olivia lived in, Lily knew that in a heartbeat her first-class lifestyle had been downgraded to economy. After many verbal spankings, a funky tattoo and ring in her nose, Lily got used to her new life. She approved of her mother's second marriage to Neil and even went to Japan with them for the wedding where she stumbled upon the much sought after magic orchid that would make her mother's employer rich. She found out who her daddy really is and ripping a page from the incestuous handbook wherein it is written that the truth can never set anyone free, agreed to keep the secret.

When her parents decided one day they needed to save a wayward kid from himself, Lily went along to get along. She feared not that Dru and Neil would devote their full attention to Devon Hamilton as it would give her more time to surf the Internet, have sex with freaks like Kevin Fisher and commit crimes with a white boy named Daniel Romalotti. What Lily could never imagine was that for all the trouble her adopted brother had been in and was getting in that she would be the one to get sent to a reform school.

What Lily could never have dreamed was that Devon's drug addict mother would move into her old room. And yes, Yolanda Hamilton is an addict. Once an addict, always an addict. No quick pass through a detox center can change that. What Dru failed to see, in her drive to take on the responsibility of raising a teenage boy when her own daughter was barely under control, was that letting Yolanda move into the box spelled trouble. In their rush to be named adoptive parents of the year, their inability to see that once Devon found his biological mother he'd want to bond with her, Dru and Neil have blown it again. The more they dig the deeper the hole gets. Adoption, noble as it may be, the Winters would have better off taking in a young child who could better appreciate having a set of parents albeit dysfunctional as Neil and Dru are.

Now they're stuck. Getting rid of Yolanda won't be easy. Unless she wants to leave of her own free will, Yolanda is right where she should be. A mathematical genius, as so many nutjobs are, Yolanda has the Winters between a rock and a hard place. If they want her out it's gonna take a gaggle of lawyers to make it happen. Since the Winters don't consult with lawyers except for when they want to sue penniless sexual predators, since they didn't have Yolanda sign a document pertaining to her residency, Yolanda doesn't have to go anywhere. If anyone moves out of the box, it'll be Neil and Dru. And wouldn't that be something? Wouldn't that be a slap across the face of reality?

Alas, Yolanda's too dumb to strike when the iron is hot. She'd rather get a job and a place of her own where she and Devon both can live. She'd rather Devon come and go as he please and not worry about having to answer to the Winters. To that end Yolanda's got the want ads out and wouldn't so much as think of using the Winters phone to call around for appointments like she may have done in the 1980's before she got knocked up and before employers stopped taking calls about possible employment and started accepting resumes of which Yolanda thinks means resume - as in go on living in a fog.

But then, if you think about it, staying on as an unwanted guest would have been stressful. It could have driven Yolanda back to Crack Ho Park for a fix. So I say, go for it, Yolanda. You try finding a place like the Winters' box on your minimum wage salary; factor in Devon's minimum wage salary if he ever remembers he has a job at the Jitter Joint; see what that'll get you in today's housing market.

And as you slurp expensive lattes while you're presumably scanning the ads and using the JJ payphone to make your calls, remember this day on those cold nights when you and Devon are throwing your raggedy shoes at the rats. Remember what you could have had but choose instead to let the Winters, and the face of reality, off the hook.

Rehab by Correspondence

October 28, 2005
by Brent Kellogg

Oh boy, somebody please give me the name of the rehab center Yolanda Hamilton will be attending in her off hours. I gotta spread the word to my Xanax-addicted friends; they're wasting time and money for those fancy Betty Ford-like clinics when they could be doing what Yolanda will be doing soon.

Yes, as crazy as it may sound, the Meth-addicted Yolanda, who, by the way, announced Friday in her best Nancy Reagan voice that she's 100% clean of both booze and Meth after only a few days in a detox center, and that she's been invited to live at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Neil Winters with her son, Devon. Just the sweetest damn turn of events since Lily Winters was reunited with white boy Daniel Romalotti, the mother and child reunion followed what was - unbeknownst to Yolanda at the time - a test of faith on the part of Mrs. Winters.

Thought at first to be another of Dru's evil tricks, the giving of cash to a drug addict still in detox was seen as a way to keep Yolanda so strung out Devon would have been forced to give up his hope of ever saving his mother. What few would have ever expected, Dru followed Yolanda to Crack Ho Park where she hid in the weeds and watched as Yolanda turned down a drug dealer's free fix.

Convinced Yolanda has learned how to say no to drugs, and not at all worried she might take up any one of a number of legal drugs, Dru invited her to join the happy Winters clan. No dummy, Yolanda took her up on the offer because she had to have known it's a cold day in Hell when not only can a troubled youth be rescued from the streets, but the mother as well.

Yolanda's entry into the clan came at a perfect time, too. Had she declined, Devon might right now be living with his mother in the park, or wherever Yolanda said she'd be staying once released from detox. Based on statements made by detox officials it was presumed that, like most still withdrawing from Meth, Yolanda would have to spend at least 30-days at a rehab center. But, as it turned out, Yolanda miraculously kicked two habits at the same time. As a reminder that she'll always be an addict, Yolanda must only check in with a rehab counselor much like one takes a correspondence course.

The news came at a good time for Devon too. Threatening to leave his adoptive family, Devon changed his mind after being reminded he's still a minor and could, at the drop of a hat, be tossed into the ever hanging over his head like a dark cloud, level-12 group home - or worse. Now, with mommy's teat as close as the guestroom. it's presumed Devon won't have to work fulltime and will graduate from High School as has been the Neil and Dru dream. It also means Neil may stop making dumb statements like the one he made Friday.

"Helping your mother won't help her."

While Dru's good deed won't erase her evil past, she implied that bringing Yolanda into the fold may foretell of bad things yet to come. At the least, the situation could get, to use the cliché going around this year, "complicated." Yolanda will be expected to get a job and her stay is not permanent.

Genoa City, Love it or Leave it

October 17, 2005
by Brent Kellogg

Are we to understand that in less than thirty days Yolanda Hamilton has been completely detoxed? Did she not just last week enter a rehab center to complete the process started at the God Have Mercy Medical Center? How is it then that Neil Winters said last week that Yolanda is "clean"?

Is it because drunks in Genoa City can rid themselves of alcoholism in about two weeks? Neil did. Katherine Sterling did. So then, why shouldn't Yolanda be clean? Because she's also addicted to Meth. Isn't she? You'd never know it by looking at her. She's not showing any signs of withdrawal. But Neil says she'll be fine so long as she receives "counseling". Funny, Neil never had to get counseling following his bout with the bottle. Katherine never did. Both these drunks kicked their habits and never looked back. Except, of course, when hindsight served their moral agenda.

The in-thing these days seems to be sending positive messages about health, so it must be asked: how will Yolanda kick her meth habit? How will she get counseling when Neil said this week he'd pay for Yolanda's continued stay at the State-funded rehab center except that "they only do detox". Since Yolanda is "clean" she cannot, apparently, stay at rehab.

Yolanda's son doesn't agree. The knows everything at age 17 Devon Hamilton doesn't want his mother to leave rehab. He wants to help Yolanda by getting a job. Neil says Yolanda will have to help herself by getting a job, paying rent and paying for her own counseling. If Devon wants to help he'll have to get a part-time job after school. But Neil forgets. Devon already has a job. Neil himself arranged for Devon to work as a file clerk at Newman Enterprises. The job Devon spent all of an hour at. Based on this blunder, maybe it's Neil who needs more detoxing. His brain is obviously not firing on all cylinders.

Devon forgot about the job too which explains why he went to the F&B Jitter Joint this week to apply for a full-time waiter's position on the day shift. Won't this be interesting? Won't Dru Winters have a fit when she finds out Devon is going to school and working full-time at the same time? Hasn't Devon's feel sorry for me bit worn thin? How many times does he need to be suspended and expelled from school? If he's kicked out of one can he merely go to another like Daniel Romalotti has done?

Is it not enough that Devon is acting like Lily Winters? Is it not old and tired that these kids get into trouble, promise never to do it again, only to do it again? Is this why Devon was back in aggressive mode on Monday when he asked Dru, "Is Neil really a tough guy or does he just act like one?"

Was it not sad that Dru didn't wash his mouth out with soap; that she seized the opportunity to sing Neil's praises? That she said Neil is "is intelligent and sensitive" and "doesn't have to prove anything to anybody and he's not afraid to fight for what he believes in" and that's why she loves him so much? Would this be the same Neil who's thinking about going to work at a mostly failed cosmetics company giving up the plush position he has at Newman Enterprises? Is that something an "intelligent" person would do?

And what of Dru's assertion that Neil has been "holding Yolanda's hand"? Has Neil done anything more than preach to Yolanda? Has he been so "busy" at his job yet still finds time to workout at the gym that Devon should be grateful Neil can pop in to see Yolanda for five minutes every now and then?

Just once it would be nice to see the hell persons with real drug problems go through. They don't just snap out of it. They don't get taken into wooden boxes with room to spare by well-to-doers when they've just begun to dry out. There are weekly AA and NA meetings and sponsors and 12-step programs often resulting in frequent relapses. There are no rich people waiting in the wings to give them fancy jobs for which they are not qualified.

Ah, but what do addicts who've been there and done that know? They've never lived in Genoa City.

A veritable wonderland, Genoa City, with its international airport where passengers more than an hour away can book a flight and board the plane in less than an hour; where terrorists can jump on a plane and not be stopped with or without the babies they may have kidnapped; where security is so lack and the police department so inept; where jail detainees are allowed unlimited phone calls and often provided private cells; where some charged with crimes go directly to prison without a trial; where divorce lawyers can pass themselves off as criminal defense lawyers and others able to get their hands on meth by the pound; where it can be morning in one part of town and evening in another; where tattoo parlors sell disguises; where law offices and cosmetic companies are open 24/7; where men and women have sex atop the furniture and not worry about cleaning up afterwards and where underage teens can rent rooms above restaurants to have sex and charge it on their parent's credit card.

It's enough to drive a person to drink, or light up a joint, or take experimental drugs prescribed by unlicensed doctors. Genoa City, you gotta love it - or leave it.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2005

That there's a world of difference between school policies in Genoa City was evidenced when Dru Winters received a phone call from her adopted son's school informing her that Devon had skipped class after repeated warnings and expulsions. Finding the boy at a state-run rehab center for crack addicts, Dru merely told Devon to go back to school and then blasted Yolanda Hamilton for being self-centered and causing Devon to do the things he does. Yolanda, of course, kissed Dru's ass and promised to make her son's wellbeing a priority like she has any control over what Devon does.

Satisfied that she's escaped responsibility again, Dru was on her way out when Yolanda's doctor hit her up for money. Turns out that the rehab center isn't free as Yolanda was led to believe. The State of Wisconsin only picks up the tab for thirty days. After that, addicts who haven't made a miraculous recovery are on their own. Yolanda's 30-days are almost up and the doctor is worried she'll go back to drugging if someone doesn't fork over some cash.

That Yolanda's continued treatment was a bait and switch didn't occur to Dru as her only concern has always been to get Yolanda out of Devon's life. Since it's obvious she's going to lose Devon, Dru has two options. Pay for Yolanda's care or move her into the Winters' wooden box. How Dru will convince her husband will be interesting at a time when Neil Winters is lost in his own self-importance.

Uninsured, Poor, Very Black, Meth Addict Denied Medical Care!
September 21, 2005
by Brent Kellogg

What's it been? Two weeks? Is that how long Meth addicted Yolanda Hamilton has been a patient at the God Have Mercy Medical Center? Wasn't she admitted on Sep 7, 2005, for an overdose? Why, yes, that's exactly how long it's been if you don't count the time warp Genoa City is caught in. In a town where five days equal one, where it can be morning at the Newman Ponderosa but night at Jabot Cosmetics, Yolanda's stay at GHM was more like two days, three tops. Despite the short time, never mind there's been no indication Yolanda is a drunk too, Dr. Reese Walker declared this week the alcoholic poison surging through her veins has been sucked dry!

Yolanda's recovery is truly a miracle in that it took just about the same amount of time to dry alcoholic Neil Winters out. Only he got to do it inside an expensive detox center! While it may seem all good for Yolanda, her troubles have only just begun.

Nice as it was to dry Yolanda out at the expense of paying patients, Dr. Walker said there is no way the hospital will allow those without health insurance to stay the extra few days needed to get off Meth. For that, Yolanda must agree to go into the Shady Pines Rehab Center where treatment is paid for by taxpayers.

"Physically, she's well," the quack actually said, as down on the ward Yolanda's body was aching for a fix.

No health insurance? Get your slimy ass out of our pristine hospitals! Go die somewhere else. Rot in your own swill as you choose between food and prescription drugs. This is the United States! Haven't you heard us say so many times how this is the richest country in the world? Haven't you heard how caring and compassionate we are? How we feel the pain of those who are poor and downtrodden but if you can't afford to get out of a city about to be hit by a hurricane you can just kiss your ass good-bye?

Taking in the doctor's sob story - of how the hospital was asked to make an exception for Yolanda and refused - the very rich Neil Winters wondered aloud about a treatment program for his adopted son's mother. Walker said he might know of one willing to take her, but Yolanda had to really really want help. Hoofing it down to her room, Neil was surprised when Yolanda said she's ready to get help. Having hit bottom she's seen the trouble she's causing her son. Nobody, not even a snippy teenager oozing with hate, should have to put up with an addicted mother.

Dr. Walker was pleased too. Now his employer and associates won't be sneering at him, pointing fingers and asking what the hell he was thinking offering free medical care to the poor and the very black. With Yolanda's signature on the dotted line, Walker was off the hook. Neil too.

If there was any heartbreaking concern for Yolanda, any outrage that she, unlike the many rich in this city who spend more time at the GHM than addicts spend tracking down their dealers and never worry how they'll pay the bill, was refused treatment for the terrible addiction Meth supposedly is, it was carefully avoided like Daniel Romalotti avoids condoms. Yolanda, when faced with a drug-free reality or her drug of choice, chose the later and fled the hospital.

Crack-Head Gets Wake Up Call
September 7, 2005

Is it so sad that Yolanda Hamilton took a drug overdose and now finds herself at the God Have Mercy Medical Center under the care of Dr. Olivia Winters? Was it any surprise that Yolanda's son whimpered, "What if she doesn't make it?" when a kid attending private school should have the smarts to know that when people don't make it they die? So what if Yolanda dies? Wouldn't it be her own damn fault for getting addicted to Meth?

Can we feel sorry for this woman when right now the odds are very good that we're on drugs too? Isn't the entire country? Wasn't there three drug commercials in a row on TV last night? Didn't you see? Can't get an erection? Take a pill. Eat too much fatty food? Take a pill. Can't breath through your nose? Take a pill.

Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read along and as false dictators rise and Gulf states crumble and this crazy world spins, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through our bloodstreams, molesting our brains and stifling our libidos. At last count 54% of Americans are popping at least one prescription drug. One in six are popping three or more, and the numbers are only increasing and this of course doesn't count alcohol or cigarettes. One in four of all teens are on some legal drug shot forth from the likes of Eli Lilly and Glaxo and Pfizer, et al. Ahh, irony. It's the American way.

It's also the Genoa City way that as Yolanda clung to life alcoholic Neil Winters had to learn from Oreo addicted Sierra Hoffman that his adopted son found Yolanda unconscious in Crack Ho Park. Knowing damn well that Yolanda is a crack addict, and because what's left of his tiny brain was pickled long ago, Neil had to ask Devon Hamilton, "Was it an overdose?"

"No, you fool. My mother has a headache," Devon might have said except that he didn't have a clue what would cause Mommy to fall on her ass in the middle of a park on a holiday after he'd just seen her trying to score.

Himself in need of some pretty pills with corporate logos on them to help correct his monosyllabic grunts and declarations that in a few months when he turns eighteen he won't need no stinking help from Neil or Neil's street urchin wife, Devon said he couldn't understand it. Why, only yesterday his mother had gone cold turkey and rid herself of years of addiction overnight. She did it all without the messy curse of withdrawal too.

Seeking clarification Neil asked, "How do you know your mom wasn't using?"

Living as he does now in the age of incredible medical miracles to match any sort of spiritual crisis, Devon sputtered, "She didn't have any money" which explained it all away. The thought that a downtrodden woman might have spread her legs or traded a stolen gold watch for a fix did not occur to a supposedly street-wise kid like Devon. In fact, Devon said he didn't want to think about it. And while he had just asked how Yolanda was doing and Devon had said he didn't know, Neil hacked, "Your mom is in serious trouble."

Without any medical diagnosis, or idea what the hell he was talking about, Neil assured Devon that Yolanda would make it. His prognosis must have been based on the faith doctrine which dictates that no matter the dire straights, no matter that patients can just walk out of GHM, in desperation they can always resort to prayer. A quick word to their higher power will bring the comatose back to an active life albeit with an out of body experience along the way.

Right on cue the butchering quack Dr. Olivia Winters waddled in to say Yolanda had overdosed on "crystal amphetamine". The statement sparked a dying cell in Devon's warped brain. "She ingested an enormous amount", he said emphatically as though he'd seen Yolanda shoot up with his own eyes when moments earlier he'd said he had no idea what was wrong except that in the meat wagon Yolanda's heart had stopped.

That his mother was clinging to life and unconscious did not discourage Devon from wanting to see Yolanda. He did not say, but may have known, that all it would take to snap his mother out of her sorry state would be a verbal order from him to "wake up". His request denied and with a need to pee, Devon stomped off to the potty in a snit.

Fearing Devon might hear their conversation Neil whispered. What information was the butcher withholding? What was so secret the quack couldn't say in front of a nearly 18-year-old boy? Looking around as though the CIA or members of the Mob might be listening in, Olivia said the meth Yolanda took was "dangerous" because she'd taken more "than most users do" which therefore explained why real doctors call overdosing, OD. This in turn caused Olivia to rattle off the warning signs she'd heard so many times on Trauma, Life in the ER. Yolanda's vital signs are low, heartbeat and BP are "off the map" and when she "wakes up" Yolanda may have the strength of ten WWF wrestlers.

Oh, God! Neil hit the panic button. He refused to let such truth reach Devon's virgin ears. Olivia agreed, but as she suggested Neil get Devon back in his crib and give him a pacifier to suck on, she, nor Neil, saw Devon enter Yolanda's room where, as expected, the sight of the tubes and noisy monitors caused him to break down bawling.

Creepy as hell and not noticing it was taking Devon a long time to pee, Neil phoned his wife to see how the "tour" of his daughter's "campus" had gone. Dru Winters reported all was well and their decision to put Lily Winters into "that school" was a smart one and never mind that the decision was made for them by the District Attorney. Learning of Devon's newest crisis, Dru said how tragic it must have been for the "poor" boy to have found Yolanda in a massive drug stupor and blamed Yolanda for putting Devon through so much pain.

At his mother's bedside Devon pleaded for her to wake up. Speaking in what could be described as Pig Latin he babbled of not understanding what went wrong. Wasn't Yolanda going to quit her habit? Can't anyone just stop when they want to? That she used again must have caused her to OD. What other reason was there for being flat on her back in a hospital? Still, there was no need to fret. The nice doctors and nurses were standing by to help if only Yolanda would wake up.

Meanwhile in the waiting room it dawned on Neil and Olivia that Devon was taking a long time to pee. Had Neil seen him? Had Olivia seen him? Gosh, he didn't come back and now they were worried. Olivia stopped sucking on a virtual Valium vial long enough to have a brain fart. Gosh, could Devon have gone into Yolanda's room? As sure as day turns into night that's exactly where they found him. Olivia's effort to shoo Devon out was hapless. Devon swore Yolanda needed him there and begged "Aunt Liv", whom he must have seen all of two times since becoming part of the Winters clan, to let him stay. By holding Yolanda's hand, and letting her know he was helping her "fight" the evil drug menace, Devon might do what modern medicine can't. "You have to let us do our job," Olivia objected, as a nurse chimed in to say Yolanda had started to stabilize.

"Stay-bull-lies? Bull? Who's lying?" Devon must have thought to himself, as for a kid supposedly about to enter his senior year in high school, did not know the meaning of the word.

"Does that mean she's doing better?" Devon asked, and even Olivia didn't seem to know. "Let's hope" she said, as Devon continued pleading to stay with his mother so that he could be there when Yolanda "wakes up."

Oh god, how Olivia wanted to let the boy stay, but damn it all, "OD's are unpredictable" the quack said, and we are not making these quotations up unless clearly indicating so which is necessary to point out because of the absurdity that someone claiming to be an M.D. would say such things.

Finally, for all the objecting, Olivia capitulated like Neil's limp weenie when he said it would be okay so long as he stayed with Devon. Sure enough, after some coaxing by Devon, Yolanda woke up, screamed she hates hospitals, ripped out the tubes stuck in her body all while demanding to be set free. Given its track record of patients who have died under Olivia's care no wonder Yolanda wanted to escape the living morgue. She might have too had some goons not appeared to keep her down.

How sad it all was. Yolanda's need for drugs and Neil's inability to grasp that he's no better. Had he only spent a moment reading a newspaper or watching the commercials he'd know. Drugs are in. Drugs rain down from the sky like purple Skittles. Drugs are mandatory and the most important advancement in child rearing since the invention of the ruler. Had he taken his daughter over his knee or put her on drugs Lily might not have gone out of control. No, not the drugs that make people horny or suppress appetites or feel really good for awhile. The good kind.

The kind prescribed by unlicensed doctors and experimental drugs like Olivia wanted to use on Ashley Carlton and Christine Blair when the two women found themselves trapped in variations of a Fugue state. The kind like cough medicine Olivia gave to Dru who got so stoned she didn't know who she was having sex with. The kind that cost $7 bucks a pop and which are roughly three times more toxic and 10 times more synthetic and a thousand times more spiritually debilitating than the "evil" street stuff Yolanda took.

Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. You name it, anyone can have it, and probably should. Millions are already addicted. Millions more will be. Isn't the sky lovely today? Isn't pharmacology great? They sure are. Yet in the daze that follow Yolanda's brain-slamming Meth habit will be ridiculed, the use of it called an "epidemic" whereas tobacco and alcohol are readily available and condoned by a government as it wages a war on drugs it cannot win and says nothing as millions kill themselves each day.

Never you mind that those millions of glassy-eyed addicts are merely being medicated to death for no viable reasons and will one day have to join AA. Addicted to legal drugs and no one bats an eye, and yet one woman ODs on Meth and suddenly it's furrowed brows and pointing fingers and scrunched imbecilic yes-men, quacks and poor adopted boys simpering like hypocrites.

Stamp Out the Homeless!
July 12, 2005

Attention Evilway shoppers! Are you tired of finding our shopping carts all over the freaking neighborhood? Are you sick of having them roll out into the street, banging into and dinging your nice gas-guzzling SUV? Are you upset your neighbor has two in his backyard for which he uses in lieu of a wheelbarrow? But most of all, are you just about fed up because each time we lose a shopping cart our produce prices go up $2 per pound and a bag a chips by $3?

If you answered yes to any of the above here's the one thing to do: Stamp out the homeless!

Yes friends, the homeless. Those drug addicted vagabonds who prey on innocent persons like yourself are stealing our carts by the truckload. You see the bastards everywhere, pushing our carts loaded with their junk and getting all huffy like they own them when they're asked to return the carts to the Evilway nearest them.

By far the homeless are to blame for this epidemic. Sucking at the public sympathy teat they whine about being unable to get jobs because they don't have a home. They beg money from hard working citizens, spend it on dope and then bitch because they're hungry. Well, boo f-ing hoo. We at your neighborhood Evilway have had it. Besides all what we've mentioned here the homeless don't even shop at Evilway! Unless, that is, you call prowling our parking lots, and stealing carts, shopping.

On top of that these greedy bastards refuse to stay at the nice homeless shelters we've created for them. Take Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle for example. Pillars of the community Katherine Sterling and Nikki Newman make their slaves sweat over a hot oven once or twice a year baking a turkey for them and what do they get in return? Attitude! Our precious teenagers donate their valuable time at the shelter for a few weeks once every three years and what do they get? Bag ladies like Amanda Hunnicutt asking to borrow $50 from the shelter manager.

As many of you know we greased the palms of certain City Council members to get a law passed forbidding the pushing of our carts in city parks. For the most part the law is working, but we got a report today that homeless women are back in the parks creating a general nuisance. Worse, if you can believe this, some of our finest police officers are becoming empathic toward them, giving them breaks when they're caught just because they were speaking with their long-lost children at the time. Not only have the homeless become belligerent their kids are too what with ordering the police to stop enforcing the law. We say if those kids are so concerned let them take their parents in. Anything, just get them to hell out of our parks and off our streets.

So we're asking again. Please stamp out the homeless. If they don't want to live in our shelters God damn them. Send them to the next city over and let those people deal with it. It's a problem we here in God-fearing Genoa City have dealt with long enough. We've got enough problems with drunk drivers and whores.

As an incentive, your Genoa City Evilway is offering $1-off coupons on anything in the store for every shopping cart recovered. When you show proof that one or more homeless persons have been deported from our fair city, either by running them out on a rail, or tar and feathering, we'll give you a $5 coupon. Be sure to read the small print, however. As upstanding citizens determined to keep our city free of rift-raft you'll not only sleep better at night, you'll save big on our everyday, high prices. Now get out there and get stomping. Stamp out the homeless today!