ENOUGH ALREADY!

Mamma fur seal and baby (that little black glob)

How come they can sleep on cold gravel and I can't sleep on an expensive mattress?

This is the fourth day of February, here in old Borrego Springs.  The high temperature was 75⁰ a few hours ago; it will drop down to near 60^o just before dawn.  There is no breeze, no air pollution, almost no noise – and the surrounding mountains clearly urge me to “come out and play”.  And here I sit, hunched over a keyboard – thoroughly bummed.  I remember the opening lines from a Dostoyevsky novel:” I am a spiteful man, I am a resentful man.  I think my liver is diseased.”  (No, that’s not the actual quotation, but it gives the flavor.  Hell, it took me three tries and spell-check just to get his name right.)

So, no – it’s not my liver keeping me inside.  It’s my lungs.  I wheeze when I breathe.  If I take a deep breath, then hold it, I hear sounds from inside that remind me of an orchestra tuning up.  And I cough.  God, do I cough!  And always at an inappropriate time.  If someone phones me, I have to call them back.  I never get the punch line in a TV news story.  No way can I sleep more than 30 minutes at a stretch.  And the stuff that comes up – but we can skip that.

The point is I am going to use this little bit of enforced physical inactivity to scan back through my sources and toss out one-liners on what I find.  It will give me something to do, and you….. Well, you know where the “Delete” button is.

1)      It is reliably predicted that cancer rates in the U.K. will increase six-times more rapidly in women than in men, mainly because of obesity and smoking rates.  I would add that women there drink things like “lager and lime” whereas men drink real beer.

2)      Johnson & Johnson continues to be sued over the role of talcum powder in causing ovarian cancer, and they continue to lose – to the tune of a few tens of millions of dollars at a crack.  However, their revenue last year was over 70 billion, and their stock price actually rose over the past year by a little over 10%.  Also, they pay a dividend of nearly 3%.  What’s that my bank is paying?  0.5%?  I guess investors aren’t much worried about talc.

3)      And here it is a Thursday, ten days later, my cough is as juicy as ever, and I am beginning to starve because nothing tastes good.  Went to ole’ Doc Huet this morning and learned that half the Borrego valley has or has had this variety of crud, which goes on essentially forever.  I guess I should have stayed in Bellingham, surrounded by all that healthy snow and ice.

4)      Finally, I am so out of energy that I can scarcely follow the TV news, let alone read cancer articles.  That being the case I am going to shut this thing down and publish what’ve got.  Send food.