It's good for me

A few days ago I was at my buddy’s house hanging out in his garage and shooting the shit. It’s one of the last great American white-guy pastimes. He was showing me his new fly rod and we he was telling me about this sweet little trout stream he knows up in Summers County when he asked if I’d like something to drink. It was getting warm so I agreed.

He went to a beat up dented Frigadare covered in bumper stickers over in the corner and said "Coke ok?"

"Sure. Coke sounds good" I reply and he deftly tosses a frosty can to me, which I catch one-handed.

I still got it.

I go to pop the top and look at the can. On the front it reads: "Caffeine free, sugar free diet Coke!"

"Boy" I say, "They sure sucked all the fun right out of this can of pop."

"What do you mean?"


"Look" and pointed to the can "What’s that say?"

He shook his head. "Yeah, my wife is always buying that shit."

"They’re taking all the fun right out of life" I told him. "Decaffeinated coffee. Non-alcoholic beer. What’s the fucking point?" I ask. "I drink the coffee for the caffeine and the beer for a buzz."

I saw low-carb beer the last time I was at the supermarket. That’s almost as ridiculous as that oxymoron of all oxymorons: ‘Coors Lite’.

"Look. Here we are in an state where it’s legal to eat road kill, but illegal to order your cheeseburger medium or your eggs over easy." I tell him. "What’s next? They are just taking all of the damn fun out of life, sucking us dry of any sense of humanity. ‘Don’t eat this, don’t eat that. Don’t drink that. It’s bad for you’!"

Damn it.

It’s like the ‘Oat-bran’ craze from a few years ago. Oat-bran everything. Horses eat oats and not too many of them live to voting age. I hate oats. I’m so sick of oats. The worst part of the oat-bran craze was I couldn’t keep out of the bathroom. I was shitting my damn brains out. My colon was so strong I could pass a 52’ Buick. Each oat-bran muffin I bought came with it’s own roll of toilet paper.

Now I’m sick of low-carb shit. Low fat shit. Diet shit. Sugar free shit.

I want my normal stuff back.

They are really just draining out the very last vestiges of personality and humanity in this country.
Everything is so pasteurized, homogenized and sealed for my protection. The media has us scared shitless to even walk out of our doors anymore.

They aren’t going to be happy until they have each and every last one of us hermetically sealed in a non-allergenic plastic bubble from cradle to the grave, being tube-fed some slop that good for us, not allowed to go outside for fear that "Something might happen to us!"

Something really might happen to us.

We might actually have fun and be happy for once.

If I stopped eating and drinking everything they say is bad for me; I’d die of starvation in about three weeks.
"But you’ll live longer!" I’m told.

So what? I’ll maybe put twenty more years onto my life. They’re at the end though! The worst years!
The adult-diaper, colostomy bag, kidney-dialysis wheelchair living in a nursing home fucking years.

You can keep them.

What ever happened to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?"

I may die younger than most Americans on all those bullshit diets. But I’ll tell you this much. I’m going to die happy, eating a medium-rare T-bone cooked over real charcoal on my grill, with a baked potato loaded with real butter and bacon bits, sucking down a real beer.

And I’ll have a Goddamn smile on my face.



Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden