Who Wants to Live Forever?

We fear everything in America. It’s the fault of the media, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, government leaders, and worst of all – it’s our own fault, because we’re a consumer society full of consumers that are hooked on consumption, and most of us will buy whatever they’re selling.

For example, what’s the most benign substance you can think of? What’s the most plentiful, simple, and crucial resource in our twitchy, throbbing carbon-based lives? It’s water. You know what I used to do as a kid when I was thirsty and wanted a glass of water? I’d go to the sink and pour a glass out of the tap. But some time ago some marketing genius in Pepsico or Coca-Cola company decided to market bottled water.

The worst part is that I don’t blame the marketing minds that first decided to dip a plastic bottle into a cool mountain stream just brimming with deer and elk pee, scoop up 12 ounces and try to sell it like prime mountain real estate. I blame the first shmoo that decided to buy it – but mostly if he or she had kids. Because we’re responsible for setting a good example for our kids. And now half of them are afraid to drink our water anymore. Billions of dollars are spent nationwide each year to recycle this most precious resource, and clean it through advanced chlorination, radiation and distillation processes. Aren’t we cleaning it enough? Now we have to have our individual hermetically sealed bottles of Evian and Aquafina and we carry them around like sippie cups.
"Oh, I have to stay hydrated."

Drink more water, they’ve been saying for years. And now it’s not just the latest AMA observation that maybe water is important to life – no, it’s a full-on marketing campaign, with catchy yet slightly terrifying slogans like "Water for Life." Drink it or die. What’s wrong? Constipation? Oh, you should drink more water. What’s that? A brain tumor? Have you been drinking enough water? Oh… your leg’s off? Drink more water.

Now doctors are saying that some of us are drinking too much water and it’s flushing the vitamins and minerals from our system before we’ve had a chance to process them. Good! I’m glad. Not only is the quest for better health making us sicker, it’s rotting our teeth. That’s right: since 1945 fluoride has been injected into the water supply of major American cities. By 1992, nearly 60% of Americans were drinking fluoridated water. Good for us. However, by 2004, only a dozen years later, the production and sale of bottled water reached 6.8 billion gallons in America. That’s an estimated consumption level of 23.8 gallons per person. So now all those kiddies sucking on their triple-distilled or mountain spring water are getting cavities in their orthodontically corrected and bleached smiles.

I think that’s FUNNY!

Americans can be sold on anything. We’re so gullible, and the more rich you are and the more trendy you fashion yourself, the more gullible you are my friend. Who remembers a little joint in swank downtown Denver called the Oxygen Bar? That’s right: thousands of twenty- and thirty-somethings got all dressed up and drove their Beemers without signaling to be among the MENSA masses that decided it was brilliant to pay the price of a single malt scotch to huff off of a tube of air. A tube of air! But not just any air: flavored air. (I got some flavored air for you.) You know what I did at the oxygen bar? I bellied up to the bar, whipped out a Camel cigarette and a slightly dampened pack of matches and started trying to strike up a little more than a conversation. But that’s me.

We’re the number one world superpower, yet our citizens belie a nation on crutches. We have too much money and too much access to too many products. We take a pill for every ailment. "I take my St. Johnswort when I need a lift." "Oh, well I take ginseng." "I take melatonin to help me sleep." "Well, I take kava kava root in my tea." "Well I take…"

Blah! SHUTUP!

We’ve become a nation of Elvises. One pill makes you go up, one makes you go down. Don’t like what you see in the Looking Glass? Take another pill, Alice.

What’s the common theme? We want to live forever and be happy. Cripes, I want to be happy, but not all the time. At times I think I’m pro-tragedy. You need some ugliness in your life to recognize the beauty. When I sit in a Starbucks with my adult sippie cup and see these sixteen year old princes and princesses roll up in their brand new Mercedes that daddy or mommy bought them I have to wonder what they know about struggling and difficulty and the human condition. (Which is why I jump them in the bathroom and take their I-Pod. It’s because I care. I’m merely assisting their growth process.)

And who wants to live forever? Well, maybe Mercedes wants to live forever. But personally I’d like to think that there’s an end to washing the dishes and taking out the trash – ending with someone spinning a twist tie over my head and dropping me in the proper repository. I get tired of situps and shaving and cooking and cleaning. Sometimes I don’t even want to chew. Better living through pharmaceuticals isn’t my way. And there’s always a trade-off.

Our bodies were designed by our DNA so intricately, so perfectly that anything we throw into the mix is unnecessary. It’s unnecessary, and we’re doing it more and more, trying to micromanage the most natural process on earth: the cycle of life and death. They should stop advertising medications on television. I think it’s tantamount to advertising cigarettes. Our nation is hooked on shortcuts and snake oils. "Ooh, I have a stuffy nose. I’d better get a prescription." "Oh no, I’m up five pounds -- I’d better buy some diet pills." "I don’t feel great... I wonder what’s wrong with me?"

GOT THAT GENERAL MALAISE FEELING? TRY GUAIFECES! TIRED OF FEELING TIRED? SLEEPING TOO LONG? SLEEPING TOO LITTLE? DO YOU FIND YOURSELF EATING AT RESTAURANTS AND SHIVERING WHEN YOU STEP OUT OF THE SHOWER? DOES ALCOHOL MAKE YOU DIZZY? DO YOU MISPLACE OR LOSE YOUR DRESS SOCKS ON A REGULAR BASIS? TRY GUAIFECES! DOES SMOKING MAKE YOU COUGH? DO BEANS GIVE YOU GAS? DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM GO STALE ON THE BEDPOST OVERNIGHT? ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF GUAIFECES IS RIGHT FOR YOU, AND START LIVING THE GOOD LIFE AGAIN!

(Side-effects may include dizziness, dry mouth, irritability, sleeplessness, migraine headaches, minor bloodclots, seizures, anal leakage, sexual dysfunction -- including but not limited to impotence or permanent, irreversible erection. In less than 75% of case studies, brain tumors were noted, as were inexplicable and often public homoerotic behavior. Less than 63.47% experienced suicide. Guaifeces is not for use in combination with MAO inhibitors, proteins, starches, grains, water or milk. More than 1.29567% of our case studies experienced swelling of the reproductive glands, and less than 56.3409% experienced mild leprosy that directly attacked the reproductive organs. Do not use Guaifeces if you drink alcohol. Do not use Guaifeces if you are sexually active. Do not use Guaifeces if you are Christian. Only one study resulted in the full-term gestation and birth of the anti-christ.)

GUAIFECES: THERE’S A BETTER WAY TO LIVE!

Pharmaceutical companies and the media have made cowards and hypochondriacs out of the majority of our nation. This is why I bought a motorcycle: to enjoy life from moment to moment, and allow the chance for it to end quickly and not by my own hands. I can’t handle the guilt associated with poisoning myself to save myself. If I took a medication to save my pancreas and in turn gave myself high blood pressure and a heart attack, I couldn’t handle it. I don’t want to be pissed off at myself for some sickly slow suicide. I’d rather be pissed at some frappacino sipping, cell-phone blabbing soccer mom that didn’t bother to look or signal before careening into the left lane and smearing me across eighty feet of asphalt. That’s fine. I’ll come back as her newest spoiled brat and make her life a living hell of late nights and rock music and motorcycles just like the one she smashed sixteen years prior – and I’ll do it all over again.

’Cause I’m probably always gonna be pissed at something or someone, and that’s alright: it helps me get things done. I rather enjoy life, when it’s on my terms. Because when it’s not on your terms, then you’re a prisoner. I think we were put on this world to love and procreate and do things we dig. If you lose those freedoms, or worse – if you give them up in the name of extending your life, then you’re simply lengthening a life sentence of mediocrity spiraling into a self-imposed hell, until there’s nothing left of you but a pair of cloudy eyes, an erratically thumping heart and a soft brain that can’t remember what it was put there for in the first place.

That’s what I think.