I Could Be Dead Any Minute...

And so could you.

Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay 

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"The idea is to die young as late as possible." -Ashley Montagu 

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

If you're still young enough to shrug off my headline/subheadline faster than a wet dog dances the wet-dog shake, good for you. I myself vaguely recall being immortal. 

And yes, I know, that you know, that you're not — unless you're a transhumanist hoping to live long enough for someone(s) to figure out how you're going to live forever — actually immortal. But one's mortality is not something most people dwell on till they reach an impossible to predict tipping point. 

And attempting to accurately portray how this is going to feel, and the implications, to someone that hasn't reached that stage yet is as pointless as trying to accurately portray just how brief a period of time their allotted threescore and ten actually is. 

And anyway, this is as it should be. 

{Why? And by the way, the actuaries have changed three score and ten to four score and gravy.} 

 

For the same reason I still believe in true love... as well as Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, et al, Dana. 

"Scratch a cynic and you will find a disappointed romantic." -Christopher Moore 

"And that's all I have to say about that" -Forrest Gump 

{Sheesh, have your Cancer cooties returned or something?}

"Nope, knock on wood," replied the author, gently tapping his prodigious noggin. 

However, 

Most geezers, geezerettes, and even many on the cusp of geezerhood are quite aware of their inevitable deletion. Some are obsessed, some embrace denial, most just keep their awareness in the box where they keep things they don't want or need to deal with on a daily basis but won't (or can't) toss in the trash. 

Given that we're all born with a terminal disease I wish to point out that even the currently statistically fortunate should pause occasionally to contemplate the big picture. 

{Your keen eye for the obvious is obvious. Is there a point to this melancholy rambling?}

Absabalutely. Given the undeniable fact that you could be dead any minute and eventually will definitely be, I have a question, what are you doing about it?

You've (hopefully) learned by now that your time is limited and that you can't have it all despite what all those articles, commercials, videos, etceteros claim. And if you just happen to have a former acquaintance that you haven't seen since they were an attractive, healthy, thirty-something who recently died at the age of 51...

 

{There it is. Now I get it.}

This sort of knowledge is a gift. So, are you gonna place this gift on a shelf with your other tchotchkes or get off your tuchus and act?

{Oy vey, it's the bucket list thing... Wait, are you familiar with the term cultural appropriation?} 

No, it ain't. Yes, I am. No, it isn't. Cultural appropriation is mostly Wokie bonkercockie.    

Bucket lists are about the pursuit of fulfilling dreams, fantasies, and elusive goals. Go for it. Just don't forget to apply the While Lying On My Death Bed test and also give a passing thought to the other kids you share the playground with, particularly the ones who share your DNA.

Big BUT, I'm talking about the day after your last day.

{Huh?} 

It's been 24 hours or so since you shuffled off your mortal coil and you're sitting in a very comfortable chair while sipping on your favorite beverage and thinking about how you lived your life. Not necessarily about the sort of things found on a bucket list — ordinary, everyday sorts of stuff.  

{No way! After you die you...} 

Please stop poopin' on my metaphor. 

You ask yourself, given what I had learned (often the hard way) about myself and life on Earth prior to being deleted had I consciously/deliberately tried to make the best use of my limited time once I grokked just how limited my time really was, that life often really is what happens to you while you're making other plans? 

{YIKES! You're one of those Intentional Living people, are you selling a book, a membership, grooming cult members or...}

I apologize, I literally didn't know till just now when I googled the phrase living intentionally — that I picked up from I know not where, because wait a sec', that sounds like something from a book, a club, or a cult — that there's a veritable industry out there. Thanks, Dana, YIKES! indeed. 

It's just that I've been trying to live intentionally for quite some time and now that I'm retired it's become an obsession. Maybe I should write a book, or start a... 

Nah, never mind, I'll leave my Stickies and gentlereaders to figure it out for themselves. All ya gotta do is look your life straight in the eye and then act appropriately. Easy-peasy.   

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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A Temporary Third Party

The pop-up political party is born.

Image by Septimiu Balica from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'rourke

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

As my gentlereaders are already aware, although my write-in campaign to become America's first (but only temporary) king failed and I was considering trying again in '24. 

{Aw geesh, here we go...} 

I have a better idea, Dana.

Come 2024, thousands of us should simultaneously run for the House of Representatives as (temporary) third-party candidates for a brand-spankin' new, pop-up political party, the Party of the People, the P.O.P. This gives us plenty of time to organize, fundraise, and have fun. 

{Fun?}

What could be more fun than saving America from the current partisan Swamp Dwellers by promising to only serve two terms and then rejoin the real world — as heroes. I already have a slogan perfect for campaign buttons, bumper stickers, and chanting. 

"Only four, not a single day more!"

{Thousands?}

Although there are only 435 possible job openings, anyone that wants to is welcome to apply for the job of representing a given district in the House of Representatives. Let the cream rise to the top. Let there be so many candidates that the partisan media, the Depublicans, the Republicrats, and the tech oligarchs are overwhelmed and have a hard time knowing who to support/throw money at. 

The P.O.P. doesn't endorse candidates and it doesn't expect candidates to swear fealty to a party platform; the P.O.P. is more virtual than actual. The P.O.P. embodies a notion of the Founding Pasty Patriarchs that there wouldn't be political parties, just free people freely choosing their representatives to The Fedrl Gummit.  

There's no self-serving, hidebound party apparatus to vet candidates, get their names on the ballot, and funnel money their way, if, they behave and do as they're told. All that's required is that a given candidate declare that they're running, that they are a write-in candidate, and that they will abide by self-imposed term limits. Their policy positions are strictly up to them. 

{Wait-wait-wait. Why two consecutive terms?} 

Everyone knows that congresspersons spend a good deal of their time raising reelection money and that the second year of their two-year term is focused on getting reelected. For all intents and purposes, Poppies are running for a four-year job that doesn't include a pension program, effectively establishing term limits.

Without an end-run around our current situation, federal term limits will never happen. Without federal term limits, the nation is fecked. A class war is breaking out in America and the oligarchs, with good reason, think they've already won; the "Deplorables" are ripe for exploitation by hustlers and demagogues.  

{But what if...}

The voters can can 'em, replace them after the first two-year term is up before they can do any more damage.  

{But what if...}

I must warn you that I'm prepared to deploy the phrase, "the voters can can 'em" indefinitely. 

{Okaaay, but the...}

Yes, The Fedrl Gummit is HOOOGE, and employs roughly 2,000,000 people, so yes, for now at least, we need professional pols that excel at getting reelected, and know where the bodies are buried.

They're called Senators, and each and every state gets two. Poppies that prove themselves to be faithful public servants who are capable of fulfilling their commitments will provide a deep bench of potential Senators. 

And I don't know (not sure I want to) how many of those 2,000,000 souls are professional congressional staffers...

Big BUT,

I think we'd all feel better knowing that this particular component of the deep state was subject to the same sort of occupational churn as the rest of us and that Poppies will be judged on who they hire and how well they manage the help. If you're prone to hiring weasels your political opponents and wannabe replacements will be delighted to call you out. 

A Poppie is a Citizen of the Republic — Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Wokie, Greenie, etcetereenie that holds that a democratic republic — the system set up by the Founding Pasty Patriarchs and that is the foundation of the American experiment — is the best form of government we imperfect and fragile H. sapiens have come up with so far and would like the experiment to continue, not be burned to the ground by the Wokies. 

 

{But a pop-up party consisting of former members of Team Red, Team Blue, and who knows who could eventually become permanent, or quickly wither away, or...}

After hopefully getting the Republic unstuck and back on the road to sanity. Perhaps even forcing the two traditional mainstream parties to reform if they want to survive. 

In the — New and Improved! — American republic, you do you and I'll be me. We'll hammer out the rules and then go get a beer. Or you go your way, I'll go mine, and we'll agree to... 

{Disagree, right?}

I was going to say leave each other the hell alone. That's what people in a free country should do, need to do, if they wish to remain free.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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The Never Ending Abortion Debate

Howsabout a compromise?

Image by Augusto Ordóñez from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"Wait a minute! Perhaps we should hold off on deciding this [issue] until cheap birth control is available at every convenience store and science develops a morning-after pill that’s available over the counter." -me

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

This is the third time I've written a column about abortion, "but I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude..." -Paul Simon, from the song 50 Ways to Love Your Lever.

{Wait-wait-wait. It's leave your lover not love your lever, and there's no such word as howsabout.}

Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe. 

{And I only recall one column.}

Well, the first was written in 2015, and you hadn't been born yet, Dana. It was the first time I suggested that perhaps a civilized compromise was the best way to resolve a controversy that's been raging since 1973 when the Supremes, invoking pretzel logic, declared that the Constitution guaranteed a woman's birthing person's right to have an abortion. 

{Well, it's obvious where you stand on the matter.} 

Yes, obviously the Constitution doesn't guarantee the right for birthing persons to have an abortion any more than it guarantees the right for gay Homo sapiens to get married. 

{I meant that you're obviously pro-life.}

I mean that I'm pro-Constitution. 

The founding pasty patriarchs codified the fundamental Rules&Regs — including a bill of rights — that apply to all the kids on the playground and that can't be altered without going to a great deal of trouble. 

They were aware of the power of the K.I.S.S principle (keep it simple stupid) more than 150 years before the late, great engineer Kelly Johnson named it and applied it masterfully in the middle of the last century before America started losing its mojo. 

The unspecified details were left up to the individual states, where the people actually lived, for the sake of what nowadays might be called that liberty thing. But I drift.

{Goes without saying. Hey, what do have against gay people?}

Nothing, and I don't care if gay H. sapiens get married. In fact, if I were king, I'd authorize generous (means-tested) tax deductions for every child gay couples were willing to adopt that had been created by illegitimate parents and/or were innocent victims of circumstance. 

{And?}

And what?

{This is where you would normally mention that you had a gay roommate back in the late 70s long before having gay friends was officially cool, a fact which you never seem to tire of mentioning.} 

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'd also proclaim that unrestricted abortion be available for the first trimester, with exceptions for rape, incest, and health problems beyond that. It just so happens that a majority of my future royal subjects feel the same way, and I'm a very responsive and benevolent monarch. 

{But meanwhile, back in the real world...} 

Let the people decide, state by state. 

{But the pollsters say most people don't want Roe v. Wade overturned.}

Well, then the people's representatives to the Swamp are going to have to pass a law. But given that Congress these days tends to be more performative than productive, don't hold your breath. Twice a year, year after year, they threaten to decide whether to make daylight savings time permanent or get rid of it and save us all a lot of unnecessary trouble and aggravation.  

So far, no good. And speaking of threatening...   

{I knew it! You're an alt-right extremist!}

Nah, just a center-right, slightly cranky (more or less) Normie endlessly striving to keep my epigenetic mordancy under control so as to retain some semblance of the cardinal virtues — as passed on to me by the late, great Sister Mary McGillicuddy  — in the midst of a culture currently in decline.

{Doesn't Pfizer make a pill for that?}

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, speaking of threatening, Uncle Joe has recently announced his support for pro-choice members of the IUPPPP&PPVTTOT (International Union of Professional Perpetually Protesting Protestors & Perpetual Victims of This, That, and the Other Thing) taking it to the streets. 

The streets where the judges and families of the Supreme Court of the United States of America live — as long as the protests are peaceful.

However, according to federal law...

"Whoever...with the intent of influencing any judge...pickets or parades...in or near...a residence occupied or used by such judge...shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."

It would appear that Uncle Joe has encouraged people to break the law.

{That sounds eerily familiar... Maybe Congress should launch an open-ended investigation.}

I just hope that the protesters are more peaceful than the mostly peaceful protesters of 2020.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column/access oldies. If you enjoy my work, and no advertising, please consider buying me a coffee via PayPal/credit-debit card.    

Feel free to comment and set me straight on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet.