Please Read These Words

Everybody wants pie. Let them eat cake. You’re gonna wake up and see the sun anyway, so you might as well just set the alarm a little earlier for a good breakfast before work. So many choices. It’s so hard to decide if you’re getting ahead of the game or slacking back. So many are not satisfied and perhaps it’s always been so. Get off the couch if you want thinner thighs. Don’t drink lattes before bed if you don’t want panic attacks. Ahh, the smell of bacon. Imagine the perfectly browned crispiness with just enough fat on it chewiness, against a gleaming white Biltmore room service plate with golden flaky over-medium eggs and a perfect strawberry garnish. Then go back three degrees. One degree from plate to truck. Another degree from truck to bacon freezer. And a third degree from bacon freezer to unsuspecting mammal confronting a sharp object. Mmmm, bacon. Still love it, but realize that a respect for the source is paramount. Think of water. When the source gets too far, our demise gets too close. And then there’s Paul Simon. He knows. He helps me not worry.”These are the days of miracles and wonder… These are the days of lasers in the jungle…” Our demise is always inevitable and we will always survive the inevitable. We will crawl out of the mud again as our ancestors have for all ages. The end of days is here for someone everyday. Every day, a spouse walks into a pool cabana of lusty betrayal, or a child watches a grandparent fade from Parkinson’s. We struggle… Sometimes. We think it’s the end of the world. We are periodically, but temporarily blinded to the gift of sunlight. Most of all, we forget the tender love that Jim and Pam exemplify on NBC’s The Office. It is a love that has persevered through the obstacles of poor timing, jealousy, and sorrow… and now blossoms. Jim and Pam give me hope. I could easily whine more about my personal conflict with bacon, and endless wars. Today, my heart wants to stay open to everything and everybody. I am grateful that NBC can still come to me free of charge, via rabbit ears duct taped to a 25-dollar color TV from Alpha Thrift. I am grateful for the love of Jim and Pam. Have a nice day, world.

Do you believe in miracles? An 80’s song proclaims, “All I need is a miracle… All I need is you.” Are we to understand that a person is a miracle? This is certainly one valid interpretation of this lyric. The point is, I am struck by the word miracle. I don’t have a dictionary open, but I think most would agree that a miracle happens when the assumed impossible is realized. Asking people whether or not they believe in miracles is one of those questions that goes well with any character assessment of our fellow humans. I find it interesting that asking, “Are you a person of faith?” may get a different response.Most people want to believe in miracles. I think that even the most cynical, hardened souls are apt to periodically climb on the bandwagons of endless possibility. I’d bet crisp new bills that any atheist in the funeral gathering will pray along with the faithful—uttering a few lines that contradict their daily spin toward the void… just in case. Believing in miracles is hip. There’s a high school guidance counselor poster saying, “You can do it!” in all of us. Our hopes and our dreams of manifesting what seems ridiculous transcend the dogmas of faith; and semantically, miracles are really not much different than faith. Faith is belief in that which we don’t wholly understand, and miracles are events transpiring outside of logic.I bring this up because we are living in a miracle; our origins can never be fully explained. If the origins of “God” or the “Prime Mover” were discovered, we would still sit around and wonder about the origins’ origins.As a resident of miracle Earth, and a child of the ‘80’s, I decided that I too need a miracle; and that miracle is clearly you. It is also every thought that brings us together. I don’t understand how we got here either, and I think some of you are scared about the miracle, or you think you’ve found a better one, and you hate other peoples’ miracles for not being as good as yours. You get scared about miracles who look different, talk different, and eat different foods. You think these other miracles are going to take your food and house, or worse, go to the movies with your daughter. Before you know it, some miracle finds the miracle of gunpowder and discovers the miracle of rapid extermination of lesser miracles free of the requirement to be a big muscle-bound miracle in order to protect your miracle. With gunpowder, miracles of any size can protect their miracle and their miracle daughters from the rather dirty miracles across town who believe in that totally lame miracle…

So I guess the president vetoed the kids… And not just kids, but poor kids. We were gonna take money from the smokers and give it to the poor kids in the form of health care. I want to know why we should take money from the smokers? Their lives are bad enough. Many of them are probably uninsured themselves, and nicotine is likely not the only drug chaining them down.Let’s radicalize. Let’s just directly tax the tobacco company… And I mean TAX! Like, “Man, my legs are TAXED from doing those two triathlons yesterday…” Let’s legislate some profits from Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds, and give their money to not only the poor sick kids, but also to the smokers. Let’s make them sell cigarettes for ten cents a pack. At first, the smokers will be like, “Yeah, alright, man! Gimme three cartons and two quarts of Old Mil’…” Soon, they’ll realize that there is no connection between low price and reducing the risk of cancer. We’ll be giving the smokers a choice: Overindulgence due to an absurd price point will make them A, quit quicker; or B, die quicker.I like the idea of truly free country, where stuff that can kill you is not only readily available—legal or not—but also dirt cheap. Let’s send the strong message to those who don’t care about themselves that we care so much for the way you don’t care, that we’re gonna help you care even less. Maybe it could work… like putting out oil well fires with dynamite.The smokers of the world would wake up, find a dime in the couch, and feel the love; and the CEO’s of Marlboro and Camel could go to bed knowing that all the poor kids across the USA have a doctor if they need one.