Saturday, June 2, 2012

Everything's Going to Kill You So Why Bother?

This the take away lesson I've gotten from basic living. What truly prompted this was reading about a study that was done essentially saying that using sunscreen will accelerate your chances of getting cancer.

What the hell was the point of using it in the first place? To prevent skin cancer from the sun. This link is not to the article I read but the article I read said people should wear hats & stay in the shade.

But, wait! If you wear hats all the time, you'll get bald. If you put long hair in a ponytail all the time, your hairline will recede.

We can make this same argument for food. There are diet & sugar substitute products that are worse for you than the sugary version. They say too much soy is bad for you but you saw people touting that as a great health food (perhaps some still do). Then, if you don't have organic you'll just die but the price is ungodly so if you're poor or just frugal it's essentially a big "fuck you." I've hear of no effort to go reform this state of affairs or get subsidies so ALL can afford good food, not even from your biggest supporters of this movement. "Spend $5 on an organic pepper," & Bloomberg's latest campaign to ban larger soft drinks in NYC restaurants, theaters & venues are not solutions in my book.

Cancer runs in my family anyway & it sounds like I could easily get it just because my father is an inconsiderate smoker who never bothered to smoke outside when we were kids (since secondhand smoke will kill you & cause cancer just as much as being an actual smoker will).

I'll be super pissed if I end up getting lung cancer later on despite not being a smoker in my entire life (why anyone in NYC would buy cigarettes in the city limits, I have no idea since the price is utter extortion; the South is the place to buy them, particularly NC where you can see the tobacco fields when you drive in the suburbs of Winston Salem).

Then, you have an increased risk of breast cancer if you don't have a child. But if you have a child, your uterus will probably droop (my sister did not need to tell me about that; I was already convinced that parenthood was not for me). Plus, you have to take care of that (to quote my Family Law professor) "puking, mewling rugrat" for the next 20+ years if not longer.

If you didn't want that kid or the responsibility of parenthood, you will not like being given dirty looks by the likes of me for next 10 or so years because you refuse to parent your child & let him/her behave like an anti-social hell spawn in public. Maybe your child will end up getting choked like this kid did. I also think that kid had it coming & if it was my parents, he'd probably be dead or castrated if his parents were useless deadbeats like it seems far too many are today. Castration might be inevitable for this kid if he treats women like that when he's older.

If the overall stress of parenthood doesn't kill you, then the breast cancer apparently will. But at least the childfree will have their own money to treat the breast cancer.

Doesn't it sound to you like everyone's going to die of cancer if they don't become casualties of the zombie apocalypse or the massive uprising against the 1% & the Christian Taliban first? Maybe some of those casualties will be suffering from cancer at the time.

It also seems you might as well die instead of fighting cancer with all the stories you see about everyone being broke & having medical bills drive them into bankruptcy. Fortunately, I know people who had cancer & apparently haven't become financially devastated as a result but you do have to wonder.

So my thoughts are that sooner or later, I'm apparently going to have cancer like everyone else. If I'm going to end up with cancer no matter how I live or what I do, what's the point in all this needless panicking & craziness in life? I understand & support doing basic stuff like not getting X-rays without wearing the lead shield or putting on sunblock so I don't get painful sunburns (damn pale skin; one drawback of my appearance).

However, I'm not having kids I don't want to raise or permanently wearing a hat. I'm also not spending a trillion dollars on food I don't even like for the sake of preventing health problems. I will also eat what I like, organic or not so long as it's fresh.

I'm from the school of moderation on most things. I don't drink so much but that's because of alcoholism being so thick in my family & not wanting to prove my father right (who I'm still somewhat indifferent toward) by becoming just like him. It took going to college to see that not everyone is an asshole drunk. If you see me drinking on that once in a blue moon day, it's either because I'm uncomfortable & don't want to say something offensive or it was free and I'm taking some obligatory small amount for a sample.

An attorney friend of mine did pose an interesting idea, though: alcohol at live attorney CLE events. That might make dealing with the company of other lawyers more tolerable. You know, perhaps that's why you see alcohol at many lawyer networking events. Maybe they need it to cope with the overbearing asshole lawyer stereotype crowd since the nice, caring crowd either doesn't show up or has other people to talk to. Not to mention some programs aren't fun at all & I'm sure drinking helps make them more interesting for some folks.

I saw an odd infomercial product just for holding your wine glass at networking events. They talked about it on a special episode of World's Dumbest called World's Smartest Inventions. I'd think lawyers would jump all over this one. That episode was hilarious though, with the note pillow & the plant with messages on the leaves. If they sold some that said "Go fuck yourself," "Give me your money," or some other humorous gems I'd be more interested. I think it was also the one that had the dog forks with the woman who made them & seemed to take it just a little too seriously.

Perhaps if pot became legal, we could add getting stoned to the menu of attorney events as well. I stay sober since for one thing, someone has to remember all this stuff & if I see something particularly odd or interesting, I'll have to tape it for posterity. I'm also much more fun sober. Maybe some lawyers already show up stoned to events (hopefully not to court)? I don't know.

I figure if I get cancer, I may have to go & get a prescription for it but then that means having to live in California. Seriously, tax revenues folks. Let's consider that in the legalization argument. You can't cry broke & then turn down things that would make money. That's like my old undergrad rejecting donation money from the guy who runs this huge adult store (legend says this happened anyway; the top brass denied but considering what we knew about this school, I wouldn't be shocked if it was true). Beggars can't be choosers, you know?

At the end of the day it seems like everything will kill you. Even stress from being a lawyer, toxic relationships, too much booze (and if I get liver problems, I WILL be pissed), etc. I'm going to keep eating what I want to eat, damn it. For the same reason I moved to NYC & as I told my mother when she was unhappy about me moving to a major city, I'd rather live a short, happy life than a long, boring one. Wouldn't you?

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