First the candy, then the bullets

[DainBramaged]

Right now, candy sales are off the charts. There are simply not enough bullets to go around. Far too many people believe Wal-Mart is the one corporation that best symbolizes America. Upwards of 75 percent of students in Oklahoma cannot name the very first president of the United States. Then again, 25 percent can. Maybe we should be impressed.


How many snippets of ugly do you want? How do you sift and sort the various specious spitwads of untoward reality? The machine keeps churning, the news wires keep pumping and it's an endless cavalcade of hope and woe, pain and stupid, divine and beautiful, same as it ever was, except completely different. Shall we dance?

Cancer rates are way down, overall. Did you know? Also, the murder rate in New York City is as low as it's been in nearly 50 years and no one can really understand why, considering how desperate and depressed and murderous everyone is supposed to be these days. Who wants candy?

Somehow, we are living longer than ever. Average lifespans are still increasing, thanks to wonder drugs and artificial pumps and valves and stimulators and the sheer force of will that millions of Americans apparently have to live long enough to watch the finale of "Dancing with the Stars."

Then again, the raw data proves we are also fatter, dumber, generally more miserable than ever. It's a bizarre paradox: prescription meds are more popular than Jesus, self-help is the biggest section of the bookstore, the U.S. ranks near the bottom in public education quality in the world, and the woeful American diet, after all these years of organic this and low-fat that and overall enthusiastic health-food awareness-raising, is just as fatty and sugary and toxic as ever. We have not learned a thing. Or if we have, we forgot it already, due to all the high-fructose corn syrup rotting our brains.

Is there a correlation? Is there some bizarre juncture where those same two opposing ideas -- longer lifespan and worse overall health -- meet and slap each other in the face and move on, pretending the other doesn't really exist? Would it not be simply terrific to someday read the exact same headline, in reverse? "Life spans shortening, everyone healthier, happier than any time in past 100 years."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/09/30/notes093009.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford#ixzz0SfWB0sU7