by Colin Hyde
These days, we see champion male football players wearing pink boots, all for solidarity with mothers. We see males all over wearing pink shirts and pink chanclas, all in solidarity with mothers. The pink gear first started coming out on Breast Cancer Awareness Day, and no eyebrows were raised, because there is no more worthy cause. But you know some guys, how they will run with a thing and make it into a fashion. Because of the proliferation of pink nowadays, you see it in the distance and it evokes as much emotion as a ponytail. You don’t know what gender is ahead until “it” turns around.
Sincere people know there’s a lot of good in the worst of us. And observant people know there’s wisdom in the believed unintelligent, the definitely uneducated, and the not so well-liked. We learned a lot after that crowd conquered Leviticus. The revelation from all these hundreds of genders is that the guys who, ahm, ostentatiously like girls, well, their thoughts might not be confined to the land of Eve. It’s a big surprise that, ouch, some of us who love girls so much, also carry a yen for cabbage and other objects that breathe. My, I wonder how those who once controlled the pink feel on finding out that they might not be the only excitement about.
Marley said everyone has a right to choose their own destiny. All is good if closet things stay behind closed doors that shelter the Krismos jekit and old shoes. My big complaint is that they shouldn’t hide pink and red ones in the pack of boxers/briefs. There you go, thinking that you have three respectable greys, or acceptable shades of blue, even green, and when you get home and peel off the wrapping you get shocked with a pink or red. The first thought that comes to mind is, I just threw away some of my money, because I am not going to wear that!
In the days when boxers/briefs were white, there were no surprises. But white fell out of fashion; I guess because washing machines don’t clean the clothes like scrub boards do. These pinks and reds, you can’t forget to wear extremely long shirts when you have them on. Can you imagine you’re in the shop and you see a nice lady reaching to put some not so light item on a high shelf, and chivalrous you on instinct rush over to help, and you lift your arms, your pantalon is not pulled up to your belly button, and your shirt lifts slightly over your waistline, and bam — your, ehm, slip is exposed?
You see now why they invented the electric and gas dryers. For sure, if you wash your own clothes, you’re not going to pin those things on the line outside. It’s divorce if you have a wife and she washes your underpants, and you come home with your friends for a game of dominoes and some macho drinking, and she has your pink or red on the line for all the neighborhood to see.
Unrelenting massive health assault on alcohol is the proper blueprint to fight weed
Alexandra Klausner, in the New York Post story titled, “I’m a cancer dietitian—these two things increase cancer risk”, warned about eating processed meat—the ham, the bacon, and the sachiz—and the drinking of alcohol.
Our concern here today is the second major disease-causing agent, according to Ms. Klausner. She said their Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finger alcohol as a major cause for health problems, and the reason why it is unhealthy is because our bodies don’t digest it. She said our body “breaks down the alcohol into a chemical called acetaldehyde, which damages the body’s DNA and prevents the body from repairing it [self].” The health issues associated with alcohol aren’t just an individual thing. People have pointed out that oftentimes a burden is put on the state to care for those of us who fall ill after the fun.
You can bet that Klausner story will cause many rum lovers to reduce the quantity they imbibe, if they don’t go full teetotaler. Exposing the negative impact on health is one of the most important tools in the fight to get people to drink less or not at all. Those of us who like a little drink wish Ms. Klausner is a liar, but too many researchers back up her finger-pointing at alcohol.
There are other bad things about alcohol, such as loss of self-control/violent behavior, and drunk driving. They are two huge scars on rum drinking. All human beings have a right to the truth. Now we know it is for us to decide, to drink or not to drink.
The people who say alcohol should be prohibited have a number of solid points. But people love drinking, the vast majority of them can handle it and accept the fallout, and they will not be denied. When the overly zealous people in the US moved and got their politicians to block the sale of rum and whiskey, it led to gang wars and massive corruption of political leaders and their security forces. The rum runners got into the business of sponsoring politicians, and the two plus two of that was that they ended up with a number of dishonest, criminal people in leadership.
Luckily, on the path to hell and damnation good sense entered and said no to prohibition; instead we will educate on the health issues associated with drinking, and we will tax, and the funds derived from production and sales of rum will pay for enforcement and education about the cost of drinking to individuals and the state.
Education is supposed to help people make better decisions. We know what the harvest from prohibiting rum was. Knowing that, we should never have arrived at using that same big, counterproductive stick for weed. Any “fool” can see that education about the ills of the weed, and taxation of production and sales make far more sense than prohibition.
Visionary leadership does not promote dishonesty, corrupting of political leaders and police, and gang proliferation that leads to murder in the streets.
Many threads in that Lord Rhaburn truth
One fine morning, one of my aunts was venting to my mom about a mutual beloved friend/brother who couldn’t start a job without smoking a pack of cigarettes first, and my mom not only had a sympathetic ear, she had beefs of her own to add to the pot. So, mid the monologue, when my aunt drew in a breath before continuing the tale of misery, my mom entered a story of her own, to show my aunt that she was not alone in the suffering. My mom wasn’t very far into her own tale of disappointment when my aunt said to her, “I don’t need sympathy or support, Lin (which is what she and my dad called my mom). I just need an ear to vent in.”
I can’t recall in which of his songs Lord Rhaburn sang that people who run gossip to you will go to someone else and run gossip about you. I guess that’s true, but not always.
Gossip is a report loaded with malice, a story told with the intention to harm, make somebody look foolish. The Merriam Webster says a gossip is “a person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others.” True friends don’t have to worry much about gossip. It is for sure that one’s true friends won’t say bad things about them, or be eager to believe bad things about them.
We don’t have all day, so I’ll just pop off this story, and hopefully we can pick up the loose threads another time. Like all things, ugly gossip has a little virtue. In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, the most malicious things were being said about Mr. Toad, whose true friends, if I remember correctly, were Country Rat, Badger, and Mole. The vile things being said about Toad were true, and his true friends got together to give him a good talking to, in the hope of putting him back on track. Sometimes there’s a big payoff for the talking to. Wouldn’t you know that Toad, after one last dive into his horrible conceit, was cured of the terrible vice? If his friends hadn’t heard the gossip, Toad would have remained the papisho in the Willows.