Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Hypertension 26: Leaders and Diseases

Leaders and diseases. They have so much in common.

You can probably guess where this is going, especially if you keep up on current affairs.

One of the nastier parts of Hypertension is that you have to give up all the great (but awful) stuff that probably helped develop your Hypertension to begin with--not that anyone actually knows where your (or my) Hypertension comes from, just to complicate matters. One specialist told me that 90% of the time no one can tell a patient where her or his high blood pressure came from. It could be lifestyle, genetic, weight...who knows?

Neither does anyone know where our Leaders come from, except I suspect they are manufactured in a special basement room of an ivy league school in Hell.

Despite our lack of specific knowledge, it is fair to write that Hypertension probably comes in part from enjoying all those great things of life:

eating crap
lying on a couch avoiding physical effort of any kind

Well, okay. Those are only two of life's great things.

But we all enjoy eating crap, aka processed food: chips and dip, ice cream, fast food fried chicken (which is morally repugnant, especially if you are a chicken), junk burgers, pizza...the list does go on. It's all food for the soul, to make us feel better. And since our society is soul destroying, we need that food a lot--which is why it is so popular.

For example, frozen chicken pot pies. Used to love those, especially when I had a cold. Great combination of pastry and chicken gravy (or whatever it was) with bits of what could have once been chicken, along with what may once have been vegetables. Unfortunately, look at the label and you'll see each tiny pie has around 27 grams of fat and the nutritional value of a bag of broken glass.

As for the other great life thing: yes, lying on the couch, watching idiots on tv being paid enormous salaries to entertain us. Or, reading a book/listening to music (if you want to be some kind of intellectual). In short: doing nothing physical. Doing something physical is hard work. Apart from sex, who needs that? And even with sex you sometimes have to wonder, especially with all the wet spots afterwards.

Why should it be wrong to drive to a grocery store a block away to buy a tub of extra rich ice cream? Is this not where the entire thrust of Western Industrial Civilization has led us? Is this not what our Leaders have given us?

But we all know that Life is unfair. If Life was fair, there would be no diseases. There would also be no Leaders to start wars, no Leaders who've never fought in a war who send someone else's children to fight, no Leaders who use soldiers who have died to justify more soldiers dieing.

Who said we get the leaders--and diseases--we deserve???

Apparently, Life does.

Where is my ice cream? The couch calls to me.

Late night update. It's December 29, 2007. Saddam Hussein was executed today. He was a truly evil despot. The U.S. invaded Iraq to install a democracy and get rid of him (it tried to kill him, first, through a 'shock and awe' bombing attack, but only killed a lot of civilian neighbours instead). The installed democracy killed Saddam, as punishment for him having other people killed. Sadam executed other people, the democracy executed him. Does murder stop murder? Is it me, or does murder seem to be a vicious circle?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like yourself, I love attention. So, I'll give you some and you'll give me some.

Victor Schwartzman said...

Why the heck not, decibel88? :)