We're All Gonna Die of Something--Get Over It

I’m ready to get on a boat and sail to somewhere that doesn’t have a hysterical media and a 24 hour news cycle. I’m not quite sure where exactly that is, but I’ll write to let you know when I get there if there is room for a few more people like myself that don’t read People magazine and are not obsessed with pop culture and the latest reality TV series.

Seriously, since we have now been introduced to the baby stealing “womb raider” (as opposed to "tomb raider") murderer Lisa Montgomery, we can all stop wondering who will provide the replacement for the recently concluded courtroom drama of the Scott and Laci Peterson murder case. This one is even better because they already have the body and the baby survived and was found in the hands of the murderer. You couldn’t have placed an order on E-Bay and paid a million dollars for a better, more TV friendly story line.

The producers, writers, and reporters in the main stream media can all stop worrying about what their next soap opera story will be and can collectively get on with writing endless, pointless expositions on all of the mind numbing details of the unfolding drama. Gretta Van Sustren on FOX News is already sharpening her knives and twisting her crooked mouth in anticipation of the next two or three years of yapping she gets to do on the subject.

I, on the other hand, just think that I’ll ask my physician what a nice dose of Celebrex, Aleve, or Vioxx “can do for me” and sail off into the sunset of my life enjoying a low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and painless, self medicated, self-induced, pre-mature death.

Just last Sunday it was announced that they were stopping a study of the prescription Arthritis drug Celebrex because of an apparent increased risk of stroke and heart attack in the study participants. Ok, I might say, I’ll just take something well proven and available “over the counter” like Aleve instead. WRONG, YOU PALEFACED REDNECK!!!

On Monday they announced that the popular over the counter alternative, Aleve, was also increasing heart risks in the same study. So what the heck are we supposed to think and do in this situation? This bunch of egg head Doctors and government busybodies apparently are running in circles, chasing their tails and looking publicly like a bunch of idiots. The only ones that seem to be happy are the medical malpractice trial lawyers who are at this minute producing TV ads and writing internet Web sites to advertise their services.

Here is my take on all of this idiocy, ladies and gentlemen. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE OF SOMETHING! If it weren’t for anti-coagulants like Heparin and Coumadin, I’d have lost both legs or died of a pulmonary embolism years ago. I have always said that I am going to live my life the way I want to and to hell with what everybody else and the media says. I’ve spent time overseas in the Philippines in the Navy during the Marcos regime and survived getting my head beat in in an Atlanta restaurant robbery. I’ve water skied, snow skied, sailed dozens of miles offshore out of sight of land in a boat by myself, flown an airplane, and scuba dived with a couple of hundred of sharks. I’ve done all of this and I’m still here to write about it.

I eat fried eggs for breakfast once a week, I cook with semi-sweet, unsalted butter every day, I eat pork, I eat beef, I eat sushi, I eat raw eggs in my Ceasar Salads, I drink wine, I drink beer, drink vodka, I pick my nose, and I fart silently in the corners of the Christmas store and walk away only to have the odorous emanations blamed on the next old blue haired lady that walks into the area behind me.

When my days are numbered and my time comes, I want it to be a closed casket funeral (actually I want to be cremated, my ashes cast into a concrete artificial reef, and dumped offshore in the ocean.) I want my body to be so worn out and aged and degenerated and abused that no one can possibly walk up and utter some inane sentiment like “He looks so good, I can’t believe he is gone to be with his maker.”

No sir, if someone like the undertaker sees my corpse I want them to say “MY GOOD GOD, HOW THE HELL DID HE EVER MAKE IT THIS FAR LOOKING LIKE THAT.” Use it up and burn it out is my motto. And if an aspirin or an Aleve or a Tylenol or God forbid—a Placebo—makes me think that things are a little better on Monday morning, so be it.. It is my decision to take one and I’m not suing anyone if my ticker quits ticking because, in the words of Jimmy Stewart: “It’s been a Wonderful Life.”

I hope yours is too…and by the way everybody--have a placebo on me!