HEALTHY LIVING

Don’t forget the Joker

US AMERICA IS ABOUT CHOICE!

Sugar babies, armor up. The choice is yours. Give us your tired diabetes.

I loved Coca Cola growing up. We drank them all. RC, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, 7-Up. They impersonate food. I still drink them today, on occasion. Sometimes, nothing but the carbon dioxide burn will do. They impersonate liquid. They pretend to sustain you. And you play along. Until you can’t move anymore. That is the bad thing. 99 ounce drinks from the stop and shop. It fuels the drive. And, being in motion is what it means to be alive. You know why you are living. Do you think the antelope is driven by curiosity? We don’t know. Do we?

Continual consumption is a human thing, all too human. Scarcity training in abundant times. Mindless eating. Reactive living. Reacting to a set of circumstances that don’t exist anymore. Except in your mind. Which is enough in the world today. We are a panel of buttons, as Mr. Bernays learned, and the puppet masters have only gotten better at pushing them.

Lest you think I am judging, I am not. This is the age I grew up in. I have a whole garage full of possessions, and just because they are all physical media types¹ doesn’t mean I don’t fall prey to the siren call of commerce. I’m still buying books, I’m still buying records. I am still buying cassette tapes. A lot of it is to send money to my friends, who are creating things, and books to help me in my journey.

And road maps.

I’m telling you this because I have chores to do, and nothing motivates me like a deadline…..for some other pressing task. I need to go outside, go on a walk, sand some Bondo. I put a big crease in one of my metal doors, and I slapped some filler on it to cover it up. I was careless, as usual.

But, if I don’t do it right now, it won’t get done. Because I will forget, and every time I see that patch, I will gripe at myself. So, I do things in a big hurry, and just over the edge of my ability, like my man Netson told me years ago about his metal working activities. I generally figure things out, but I am not a finish worker. I can repair things, but I don’t have the patience to make things great.

I am a sloppy, imprecise mess. Measure many times, cut once. Sharpen your saw. Draw a line. It still has a gap. Oh well.

Anyway, back to consumption. All my life I have consumed large. A lot of soda. A lot of coffee. A lot of food, eaten really fast. It doesn’t really work for me anymore. I’m trying to switch to a water and air diet. And more activity. That’s my to do list, RE; consumption of food.

Mrs. R is done with the inflow of media formats. Especially when she doesn’t see much listening, reading, or watching going on. She has a point. I went through some boxes of records in the garage and enjoyed it, which is a first since my ejection from the music industry. I think R would be more into my predilections if I could find a particular record and play it, on the stereo, so we could both enjoy it. I have to agree.

Gives me a goal. To ignore and do something else instead.

You have to have goals.

1. I don’t have any Betamax, or wax cylinders, or wire recordings. Everything else is there. I confess. I need to address this. Or, get more players.