Dances With Pearls (2014)
As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.—Mark Twain
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I hate the sight of no smoking signs. Not that I’m this huge smoker by any stretch of the imagination. Cigarettes are, in my opinion, a waste of money; three or four puffs and they’re gone. Why bother? I’ll occasionally smoke a pipe if I’m stressed and trying to chill, or perhaps have a cigar while out in the middle of nowhere, sitting around a campfire. I don’t have this huge oral fixation that requires I put something up to my mouth all the time. Still, the very sight of a no smoking sign angers me because it restricts my right to choose. Am I not intelligent enough to make the right choice? Are you calling me stupid with your fucking sign? Can you not see how horribly insulting that damn sign is?
I understand: clean air. The statistics regarding second-hand smoke are damning. I’ll admit, I don’t mind walking into an office, especially the doctor’s office, and the whole place not smelling like smoke. I don’t mind walking into a restaurant and not having to choose between smoking or non-smoking (we typically chose smoking simply because it was less crowded). I don’t mind coming home and my clothes not smelling like a cheap brand of cigarettes. I get it. I understand what anti-smoking advocates are trying to do. I still don’t like the damn signs.
Statistics are clear: cigarette smoking remains the largest single preventable cause of death in the United States. In addition to killing somewhere in the neighborhood of 480,000 people in the US each year, the direct cost of that addiction in terms of healthcare and lost productivity is around $300 billion annually. Smoking doesn’t play fair, either. One is more likely to smoke if they are male, has their GED, is a former service member, and is racially mixed, according to statistical evidence. Children born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are likely to have a significantly lower birth rate. Smoking is the second leading cause of death in the entire world. The numbers against smoking are absolutely overwhelming.
There’s just one problem: Uncle Fred.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]If you’ve known me more than five minutes I’ve probably told you about my Uncle Fred. I know I’ve written about him before. Uncle Fred was one of those migrants in John Updike’s The Grapes of Wrath that left dust bowl Oklahoma along with his wife, Aunt Irene, who was my grandmother’s sister. They settled in Turlock, California, up in the Northern end of that state, worked hard from sunup to sundown, raised three boys, were heavily engaged in civic activities, traveled when they could, argued with each other like cats and dogs and lived what was, for their time, a pretty normal life.
Uncle Fred was a two-pack-a-day smoker. He was respectful, he’d go outside, step away from the doorway, smoke two or three, then come back inside. If it were raining and the porch was too short, he’d either find a tree or stand under the eve of the house. All that smoking eventually killed him … at age 96. Aunt Irene, who didn’t smoke and wouldn’t allow Fred to do it in their house, died four years later at age 92. If we look solely at Fred and Irene’s statistics, smoking’s apparently good for you. That’s why I have a problem with those damn signs. Statistics are numbers and numbers aren’t people. We don’t know how many Uncle Freds there are because, since they aren’t dying off too quickly, we’re not studying them.
There are roughly 320 million people in the United States. If we lose 480,000 to smoking each year, that’s a whopping 0.15% of the total. Pay attention. That’s not fifteen percent. That’s less than two-tenths of ONE percent. We’re making all this fuss over a group of people so statistically small that, in almost any other study, they would be insignificant. With over seven billion people on the planet, we’re over-populated beyond the point of sustainability. We need more than 0.15% to die off if we’re going to continue living here. Sustainability is more critical than smoking at this point. Think of smokers as volunteers for population control.
Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em and lose the damn signs.[/one_half_last]
10 Reasons You Are Going To DIE!
When Dreams Die (2010)
“It is said that mourning, by its gradual labour, slowly erases pain; I could not, I cannot believe this; because for me, Time eliminates the emotion of loss (I do not weep), that is all. For the rest, everything has remained motionless. For what I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being; and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indispensable, but the irreplaceable.” ― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]You are not safe. You are going to die. If you don’t believe me, just check any of the clickbait lists on social media expounding upon the many ways in which that just might happen. Everything from e-cigs to orange juice has one problem or another if you ask the right person. The internet has made it possible for bad science, or often no science, to have a voice it really shouldn’t have and the result is fear mongering over issues that really shouldn’t exist. So, here’s a list of all the things that really, seriously, could result in your death.
Sure, you like to think that everyone loves you. Your spouse adores the ground on which you walk. Your parents think you do no wrong. Your siblings aren’t the least be jealous. Your co-workers are proud of your accomplishments. Right. Go ahead and think that. In reality, most murder victims are killed by someone they know, often a family member. The larger your insurance policy, the greater the risk. Be careful with that OJ this morning.
I’m still not sure how genetically modified food suddenly went from being the god-send that would end hunger around the planet to the horrible poison that is going to kill us all. There isn’t a substantial amount real science to back up all the fear mongering and political arm-twisting on the subject. Fact is, strawberries as we know and enjoy them wouldn’t even exist without some genetic modification. Same is true for a number of standard foods, which makes it absolutely laughable when one sees them in the organic section of the produce aisle. As the world becomes less hospitable to traditional farming, the choices are likely to be GMO or die. Your call.
I recently heard one climate-change denier base his entire argument on the fact that property he owns in Key West isn’t yet under water. The key word there, pardon the pun, is yet. Climate change wasn’t an argument when I was in elementary school. Over 40 years ago we were being taught that as greenhouse gasses increased, the earth’s temperature would warm and the oceans would inevitably rise, eventually dramatically reshaping the continents as we know them now. What has changed is the timetable. Back then, most scientists were estimating that rise would take effect somewhere in the 22nd century. Now, most are saying it could happen in this one. I hope you know how to dog paddle.
I no longer drive. What being a passenger the past few years has taught me is that those of you who do drive are nuts. Every day, we encounter so many near-misses that I’m amazed we’re not burying more drivers. The fact that people have actually become proficient at dodging each other should tell us just how bad our driving has become. Driving rules really aren’t that difficult. Stay in your lane. Use your damn turn signal. Slow the fuck down already! Keep your eyes on the road, not your phone. Perhaps most important, though, is that you actually plan your trip so you know where you’re going and know when you need to leave. Traffic is going to suck. Plan on it and maybe you won’t be the reason everyone else is late for work.
I have a habit when I get on elevators. I look for the weight limit and then check the people who are around me. If it appears we might be pushing that weight limit, I get off the damn elevator. I’m not taking that risk. Yes, I know modern elevators have emergency braking systems in case the cable breaks. I don’t trust them. Why? Americans are obese and one place where that creates a real strain is on elevator cables lifting our fat asses from the first floor to the second because we get winded taking the stairs. Breaking cables are inevitable. Go ahead and keep eating like a pig if you must. Just be careful going to your doctor. The cardiac specialist is on the fourteenth floor.
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Southern Indiana has recently experienced a dramatic increase in HIV/AIDS cases due to one specific problem: needle sharing. Now, while a lot of the political rhetoric centers around the state cutting funding for public health sources, the reality is that if you’re sharing needles you’re just asking to die. Period. I’ll admit that I don’t really understand what drives a person to share needles in the first place; that’s not an addiction that has ever been remotely tempting. I do, however, realize that the problem is ultimately, politics aside, one of your own doing. So, let’s get this straight: if you share needles, you’re going to die and it’s not going to be pretty.
Here’s another piece of bad science that has just gotten totally out of control. A recent measles outbreak is evidence of just how stupid some people can be when it comes to the health of their own children. Measles. Really. We had that disease all but licked until a few idiots decided to stop immunizing their kids. Next think you know, children everywhere, especially those who already had some form of immune deficiency, are breaking out with one of the most easily eradicated and totally unnecessary diseases possible. There is no real science behind anti-vaxing, just paranoid stupidity and the end results are lethal. Not immunizing your children is signing their death warrant. The risk is just that real. Stupid.
Haven’t we all been there? We’re driving down the road, 30 minutes or so from home, when we suddenly wonder whether we actually remembered to turn off the oven. Okay, so millennials don’t have this problem because they don’t know how to cook, but older generations understand. There’s always that chance that you left on the oven, which means there could be gas building up inside your own right now, creating an inevitable powder keg. All it needs is the sudden rush of oxygen you’ll make available when you open the door, and boom! You, your house, and possibly even your neighbor’s houses are all going up in smoke. You know it could happen. You’re never really sure. Maybe you should turn around and check now.
I’m not kidding. They’re out there. We’re not talking about the little guys that help Santa deliver presents on Christmas Eve, either. Elves are evil, mean, and waiting to sabotage your every move, your every plan. You never see the little suckers until it’s too late. They tampered with your break lines. They put sleeping powder in the pilot’s coffee. Elves stretch electrical cords across the floor and then make them invisible until you’ve tripped over one. The water on the floor that cause you to slip and fall? Elves. I tell you, man, their everywhere and they’re out to get you. I swear it.
Sorry, I’m not making this one up. It’s really there. There’s no getting around it. Nothing you do is going to save your ass. You’re done for you’re going to die. The Bible says so. You’re toast.
Are you scared yet? Are you ready to crawl in a hole and hide? Can we get real for a moment? Sure, we’re all going to die, sooner or later, one way or another. I frequently tell the story of my Uncle Fred who died from smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day. He was 96. He didn’t stop smoking until he was 94. How, where and when one dies matters much less than how one lives. You have one life. Are you going to spend it worrying about what might kill you or are you going to spend your life actually living? You don’t have to listen to all the doomsayers on the Internet. You’ll probably live longer if you spend less time on the Internet completely. So go ahead. Defy death. Live. [/one_half_last]
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