Tag: Life

Apocalypse – Not Quite Yet!

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Unless you’re living on Mars, you know our world is walking a whole new path these days.  We all know the situation; we all have information.  Most of it is real; some of it — not so much.  And we’re all trying to figure out what happens next.  Nobody knows.  However, before we cash in our emotional chips and hide in the closet, we need to think about a few things.  This isn’t an essay in rose-coloured glasses — just a little reality check in these troubled times.

No virus can cancel singing.  Just ask the Italians.

In the future, there will be a lot less time spent in boring meetings where everybody sits around in a little room, talking about what needs to be done instead of doing it.

Finally, people have something real to think about, and they can quit wasting their time, rattling on about which wannabe celebrity said what on Twitter.

Even as you read this, millions of people all over the world are working flat out to get this thing under control.  And they’re succeeding.  Vaccines have been developed at several medical facilities, and human testing has already started in Seattle.

For every story about somebody being a dick, there are a ton of unselfish acts of kindness – too numerous to list.

For the first time in human history, there is no “them and us.”  We’re all in this war together.  This might be hard to get used to at first, but eventually it’s going to be normal.

And the indomitable human spirit will prevail.  Here are just a few examples of people saying, “I’m still standing” and laughing in the face of serious adversity.

1 — It’s been 5 days without sports on TV, but I met a woman on the sofa this evening.  Her name is Marsha.  She told me she lives here.  She seems nice.

2 – We’re all going to brag to our grandchildren that, when we were young, they wouldn’t let us go to school and we didn’t have any toilet paper.

3 — I never thought I’d see the day when cannabis is easier to get than hand sanitizer.

4 — I wish self-isolation meant not watching the news.

5 — There’s a new drink called the Quarantini.  It’s just a regular martini, but you drink it by yourself.

6 — With everybody forced to stay home, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a minor baby boom, and in 2033, we’ll be calling them The Quaran-teens.

7 — Apparently, 2020 is being written by Stephen King.

8 — To all those people buying tons of toilet paper: you better stock up on condoms too, so you don’t raise any more idiots like you.

And finally, my favourite:

9 — Come on, folks!  If we set aside our differences and all pull together, we can make this the best damn pandemic ever!

What I Know Now – I Didn’t Know Then

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I’ve been roaming this planet for a few years now, and I’m constantly amazed at how little I know.  In fact, my comprehension of ideas and events seems to be working backwards — like an intellectual Benjamin Button.  Stuff that I knew with all certainty to be true when I was a younger man has become – not so much.  Here are just a few examples of how dead wrong I was.

When I was a kid, I was certain that the best minds would always, eventually, rise to shed light on, and perhaps even vanquish, the dark forces of ignorance.  Welcome to 2020, boys and girls, when the leader of the Free World is going to be either Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders or – holy crap! – Joe Biden.

As a young person, I believed information and education were the keys to solving the world’s problems.   Not even close!  Here we are, the most educated population in history, with all the information in the universe available to us at the click of a mouse, and what are we doing?  Playing “Fortnite” and binge-watching The Walking Dead.  I rest my case.

I used to think that popular democracy was a good thing.  ‘Fraid not!  I have one word for you – Twitter.

At one time, I believed that intelligence was a sliding scale.  It was my assumption that all people were relatively smart, depending on how you looked at it.  Nope!  The world is full of evidence that stupid is real, it’s everywhere and, in some cases, it’s thick enough to cut with a knife.  Plus, it’s contagious.  Hang out with stupid people long enough and you’ll end up buying outrageous amounts of toilet paper because – uh – a bunch of other people are buying it?  (Too soon?)

And finally:

At one time, I thought the truth was an absolute.  Actually, the truth is a moveable feast, and thank God for that, because there are certain times when I want to be lied to.  For example, I don’t want to know how many nuclear weapons have been lost since 1945.  Just tell me none and I’ll be fine with that.  Nor do I want to know how close we are to economic disaster, why climate change can’t be reversed or what kind of bums and noses are in my hotdog.  The fact is, in some cases, the truth will not set you free — it’ll just totally stress you out.

A Few Myths About Food

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People believe all kinds of stupid crap, stuff that doesn’t really make any sense but somehow gets passed around as absolute truth.  Mostly these things are harmless, like poinsettias are poison or bananas grow on trees, but sometimes they get a lot more traction than that and start causing trouble.  For example, here are a few “facts” that don’t have a lick of evidence to support them, but people believe they are the key to a healthy life.

You should drink 8 glasses of water every day.  There is absolutely no evidence to support this myth.  Think about it!  Why eight?  How big are the glasses?  Can you drink them all in the morning and take the rest of the day off?  What happens if you drink nine?  Do you OD and start swimming upstream?

Smoothies are healthy.  Not necessarily.  If you make your own, you’ve got a fighting chance (depending on how much chocolate sauce you use) but if you buy them commercially, you’re getting sugar – lots of sugar.  That’s why they taste so good.

Salt is bad for you.  Wrong!  Banishing salt from your diet can hurt you just as much as eating too much.  Here’s the deal: use your head!  There’s no need to be a sodium evangelist, but you shouldn’t flash the salt shaker around like maracas, either.

Low-Fat is a healthy alternative.  If you eat like Henry VIII, maybe, but regular people need a certain amount of fat in their diet.  The other thing to remember is stuff that’s labelled Low-Fat is only low-fat by comparison.  Compared to what, you ask?  Good question!

You need to walk 10,000 steps a day.  Once again, there is no evidence to support this.  However, unlike most modern myths, this one actually has an origin.  One of the slogans to promote fitness before the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo was Manpo-kei which, literally translated, means 10,000 steps.  Somehow, it got morphed into a fitness fact.

Energy drinks are healthy.  Not even close.  Read the label/do the math. They’re loaded with enough sugar to qualify them as junk food.  Plus, there have to be some serious chemicals in there to turn the liquid you’re drinking bright blue, or neon green.

And finally:

Organic food is chemical free.  No it isn’t.  First of all, on our planet, the wind blows, and very few organic farms are hermetically sealed.  Secondly, there are all kinds of chemicals that are allowed in “certified organic” food; it’s just that nobody mentions them.  And finally, “organic” is a term that has a slippery definition, so slapping it on a label doesn’t mean much.