Blogging: The Best Cheap-Ass Therapy I Can Afford On A Bellman’s Salary.

HOOK’S NOTE:  I haven’t been feeling like myself for a few days. My IBS, which has plagued me for over two years but has just been diagnosed, has me feeling washed out, fed up and angry. (Yes, I have a condition they advertise drugs for on TV. Yay, me!) So please forgive me if this post is less than stellar.

As I type these words on a soulless machine of plastic and metal a song is playing in the lobby. It is a jaunty, upbeat tune that asks a simple question: What do I stand for?

Now, I’ve done my research and it seems I am under no obligation whatsoever to answer the query in question.

But since I am still filled with such a feeling of despair/anxiety/blahness, what’s the harm, right? At the very least it should be a worthwhile distraction, right? Okay, so what do I stand for?

By the way, that wasn’t a rhetorical question… I really don’t know what I stand for. Does anyone, really? I mean, it’s not like it’s something you need to clearly define in order to get going in the morning.

“Do I eat here or grab something at the office? Like Sheila from accounting, for instance?”

“Do I wear a skirt or pants?”

“Do I tuck my Batman t-shirt in or leave it untucked and risk the wrath of my wife?”

(I actually ask myself that question all the time. My wife hates an untucked shirt.)

But back to the question at hand: What causes do I rally behind? What do I consider an act of evil? In which direction does my moral compass point? Who the hell am I anyway?

Helluva question to ask as I’m drifting through a thick spiritual funk, isn’t it? I can barely write or tweet at the moment and here I am attempting to lay my soul bare for all the world to see. Okay, so maybe “all the world to see” is a stretch. Shut up.

But here’s what I believe in.

 

Welcome to my nightmare, (otherwise known as my consciousness) ya filthy animals…

Universal health care.  I don’t care what country you live in or what it’s economic situation looks like, a government’s number one priority is to look after the citizens that put that structure in place to begin with. We have three main political parties in Canada, several independent parties and a gazillion politicians; if we can afford to fund such a colossal enterprise why can’t we afford to provide at the very least, basic medical services to every single citizen who requires them?

Of you’ve ever spent any time in a hospital you understand where I’m coming from, right? Many of them are dirty (when they should be anything but) woefully understaffed and run by people who have become so jaded and desensitized to human suffering they’re in need of care themselves.

 

Access to porn for every citizen who has reached the age of puberty.  Roll your eyes all you like, but I’m talking about good old-fashioned, mainstream pornography like mom and dad used to keep hidden in their bedroom closet.

But with far less hair, of course.

As long as a person has been raised right and possesses a healthy understanding of human sexuality they can watch the collective works of Julia Ann, Kenna James, and of course, Mercedes Carrera, without being convinced all women are bisexual sex kittens and the pizza person can be paid off with coitus.

Life is hard (pun intended) and too many of us are wound tighter than a Cherokee drum. Without an outlet, a release, these citizens will eventually snap. I say it’s better to explode than snap. Again, pun intended.

Screw, Buddha, I maintain that this is the greatest relaxation technique ever conceived by the human mind.

 

Respect and financial assistance for old folks.  Sure they may smell like old cheese and unrealized dreams, but seniors need deserve to be treated with dignity and to be cared for by those of us who are still able to bend over without snapping a vertebrae.

 

Never raising one’s hand in violence to a child – especially your own.  I have a particularly personal connection to anyone who has been abused by a family member. This is a betrayal that cannot be categorized as evil, for it goes beyond that.

 

 

Rape is the ultimate evil.  If I need to convince you of this, well, there’s nothing more to say, is there? Incidentally, I’ll never use a term like “sexual assault”; that’s a sanitized term some coward made up to make himself more comfortable discussing the most violent, degrading act one human being can perpetrate upon another.

 

 

Coca-Cola is ambrosia.  Thanks to my stomach issues pop (that’s “soda” to you Yankees) burns my stomach with all the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns – but before that I loved it like no other beverage I’ve ever consumed. I have given it up forever but my love endures.

 

You are beautiful and deserve to be loved.  Every human being does. Even Sean Spicer. (Though I’m assuming his beauty is hidden under many, many, many layers of snark.)

 

We need to halt the extinction of animal species.  Hunting for survival is one thing but hunting just to be able to mount a creature’s head on your den wall so you can brag to the boys at the country club is just ludicrous.

 

Anyone who doesn’t tip wait staff, bellmen, or anyone who provides them with a service is a douchebag.  I don’t care what your argument is (that’s your opinion, this is mine) if you can afford to go out and eat or take a vacation you can afford to tip. Governments allow employers to pay workers in gratuitous positions minimum wage – and sometimes less – so tips can make all the difference in the world. And workers take these tips and spend them at businesses these non-tippers work at, thus stimulating the economy, so the wheel goes round and round. So there.

 

I could go on.

But I don’t feel like it.

See you in the lobby, kids…