Does anybody else crave a lift after this long winter? The election season, the rains and treacherous fires in L.A., have left me longing for some fun. I yearn for the clever Mad Magazine days. Some of you might recall Alfred E. Newman on the cover with his question, “what me worry?” A little dry wit goes a long way in scary times. And since journalism, social security and everything else is under threat, I had to lighten up here. Time for a tickle instead of post trauma stress and wincing at the news.
Watching the latest wacky bunch running our government is enough to make anyone worry, even some Republicans. Trump thinks he’s buying the entire planet in order to build Teflon resorts. Watch out, he might purchase Sonoma soon. Or maybe we have other eggheads doing that here already? I seriously could use more humor, like the wry kind we used to have. Anyone remember Jules Feiffer cartoons – a “dance to spring?” His art took us like a boomerang from persnickety life problems toward farcical fun.
These days, thank God, there are gleeful people like Oliver Burkeman who perk me up these days. He writes for The Guardian with a wiggly wild side. In his latest essays, he writes, “you are going to die.” It cheered me up in a weird way. I felt weighed down by car repairs and rising bills, but he gave all that a British twist. “There’s no reason to believe you’ll ever feel on top of things,” he writes, with a firm grip on out of the box thinking, “you’ll never get it all done anyway, so relax.” Well, I glanced down my to do list with a titled head “Does it need to get done today?” I had a much better week!
I had to laugh at myself after reading that. I realized one great thing about inevitably dying would be the end of my to do list. No more DMV exams, dental visits, crazy politicians, waking up to alarm clocks, diets, the absolute end of unsubscribing from email ads.
Not to digress, but while our White House is busy making America great again, you gotta have a sideways chuckle at the latest calamity. We have plastic straws back! Trump signed an order to renew them! Even knowing that micro plastics in the body could be linked to heart disease and harming marine life. Skip the straw but wave it around first.
So, after talking with friends about hip replacements and back surgeries and Metamucil, dip into potato chips and tator tots and have some fun with a big F. Hey, we’re all gonna die. If you can’t get your to-do list done, or solve all your problems, then it is much easier to give yourself permission to do the things that matter now. Before it’s too late.
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