The Last One Syndrome

Another Sunday in the doldrums. I’ve said it before, I repeat it here. I don’t like Sundays. There’s no mail, no real news of any kind, nothing on TV (of course there is never anything worth watching on TV), and on this Sunday it is raining and gloomy and not at all conducive to working in the garden. It makes me brood about things.

For example, according to the Mountain Goat Report, an Idaho business has been making money for years by importing hazardous waste. Apparently over a million tons of hazardous waste has been brought in and placed somewhere in our fair state. Now is that dumb or what? Importing hazardous waste for profit does not seem to me to be a business we ought to allow. Naturally, they had to have some special dispensation to do this, such dispensation must have come from our Idaho Legislature. Only a Republican Legislature could have bought into this travesty. This is the same bunch of demented Republicans who have fought for years to avoid paying for education in our state. They are still fighting in the courts so as to not have to pay for education if they can help it. As I recall, one of them several years ago even suggested changing the Idaho Constitution so the state wouldn’t have to fund education at all. There is not space here to go into detail but not funding education is even more crazy and short-sighed than importing hazardous waste. Not funding education is like betting against the future, importing hazardous waste is much the same. I wonder if they would import smallpox if someone would pay them for it. Anyway, enough brooding about that for the moment.

Another thing to brood about is the drug “war.” Our drug czar, whoever he is, has announced that people who smoke marijuana are depressed. Our drug czar is always picked from a group of people who know absolutely nothing about drugs. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe him because of personal experience and observations on many friends and acquaintances for more than sixty years. If there is any grain of truth at all in this claim it has to be related to the simple fact that under our completely absurd drug laws marijuana is illegal. People who smoke it know they are in danger of going to jail for something that millions of other Americans do year after year, and something that is nowhere near as bad as drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco that, paradoxically, is legal. No wonder they might be a bit depressed (if, indeed, they are). Anyway, just another feature of our culture of the totally absurd.

Then there is the matter of pet food. Millions of people are going hungry and the situation is getting progressively worse. This is partly because we would rather have gasoline for our gas-guzzlers than food for everyone. But worse, I think, is that at the very moment human hunger and starvation are serious problems we see ads on TV for expensive cat food called Fancy Feast and other such unthinking and stupid things. The ads for dog food, like the ones for something called Benefical (or something like that), actually display a container of absolutely delicious looking food that anyone would probably eat. Of course we have never worried about people starving, we don’t even worry much about people starving right here at home. That’s why the Reverend Wright can say his church feeds 5000 people a year while the administration cuts their food stamps. Of course we know those people are hungry only because they are lazy and won’t work (don’t we?). You see, there’s plenty to brood about on a gloomy Sunday, if you’re a brooding type like me.

One final disturbing thought that has to do with aging. I find myself suffering from what I have named the “Last One Syndrome.” This doubtless affects people at different ages depending upon their health and personalities. It takes the form of tending to believe that the things you must do may be the last of them. Like, for example, buying a car. I always think, “this is probably the last car I’ll ever buy” (I have felt this for the last three cars I’ve purchased). But it’s not only cars and big things like that. Take shampoo, for another example. I buy a big bottle of shampoo and I can’t help but think it’ll be my last one. Mennen Speed Stick deodorant is worse as I know just how long it can last. I pay for a magazine subscription thinking it will be the last time. Getting a new pair of contact lenses, too, brings this disturbing thought about. Going on trips, as well, brings this to mind. A friend of mine, even older than I am, once announced to a roomful of older people that he and his wife were going to Paris, adding, “I guess for the last time.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. I’d like to believe that this syndrome would make you enjoy your last meals and such even more, knowing they might be the last ones you’ll ever have. But I don’t. It’s uncomfortable. I can’t believe the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t focused on this and given us a pill for it. I mean, after all, they give us pills to make us happy and make us sleep, and make us stay awake, and relieve pain, and, nowadays, it seems, for myriad illnesses we don’t even have, and that may not even be real illnesses in the first place. I know it doesn’t do to brood too much about this, and there is an “up side” to it.

Now when I go to a dentist or a doctor I always assume it’s for the last time. That’s a very pleasant thought. And I won’t have to live through any more wars. Even better though, is when I realize I will probably never again have to either see or hear George W. Bush or Dick the Slimy, or any of their idiotic followers. Now there’s genuine pleasure!

LKBIQ:
“Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.”
Groucho Marx