The “Rock, Paper, Scissors” of Basic Human Needs

What beats hunger among human needs? In my case, laziness. I proved this today when I looked in my mostly-bare cupboards and found…not much. Just four flights of stairs below my flat—or a short ride in the elevator—a supermarket calls to quench any and all food cravings, yet I settled for an onion tortilla on toast.

What is the third element in this game? Booze, which beats hunger and laziness every time. Alcohol trumps fear. Don’t believe me? The next time there is a tsunami warning in your area, take a walk down to the beach. If there is a bar open, it will have customers.

Vindicated!

Romaine lettuce can actually kill you. I win! I hate lettuce. When I first moved to Greece I fell in love with the Greek salad (horiatiki, or peasant salad) because it was lettuce-free. If someone ever serves you Greek salad with lettuce you should throw it in their fat face, although you risk giving them E. coli.

“If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine or whether a salad mix contains romaine, do not eat it and throw it away,” the C.D.C. statement said. “Wash and sanitize drawers or shelves in refrigerators where romaine was stored.”

I’ve never had to put on a hazmat suit to remove a pork product from my fridge. Turns out, my pork rinds are better for me than this leafy, green poison.

In another 500 years or so, some religious group will proscribe lettuce for their adherents, just like Jews did after some poor slob got sick from eating pork. Then they were plagiarized by Muslims 2,000 years later. I’ve always been an atheist, but I could get on board any religion that bans lettuce. Lettuce is useless, both nutritionally and in flavor.

Welcome to the Shooting Gallery

I thought things were kind of quiet until discovering that the news about mass shootings in the newspaper is in a different spot. It used to be between the Sudoku and the weather, but now it’s between sports and financial news.

In a not-entirely-unrelated matter, ever wonder what the body count has to be to make the front pages these days? I’m thinking 10 deaths has to be the cut-off otherwise that’s just about the only news you’d see.

On the recent shooting in a Chicago hospital:

“Our first goal was to start grabbing patients out of the rooms,” said Clarence Smith, a hospital worker who described evacuating four patients, including one in a wheelchair, during the chaotic and frightening minutes that followed a cascade of gunshots. “You don’t know if the active shooter is down the hall or not. You had to put the blinders on and just keeping moving forward, and that’s what I did.”

So things have become so insane that we’re taking people OUT of the hospital to keep them safe? OK, I got it. Is this an example of a metaphor or is it symbolism? I always confuse those two. Or irony? I mean besides being totally insane.

Since we lack the political will to do anything about the sale of firearms to any maniac who wants one, I’m thoroughly convinced that the only way we can defend ourselves against gun violence is to attack the masculinity of the shooters. I'm not saying that everyone who buys a gun has no penis, but I would say this is the case with mass murderers.

“Police were puzzled to find that the gunman had no discernible genitalia. ‘It was just all smooth down there, like a Ken doll,’ a police spokesman said.”

Or:

“Investigators say that the shooter’s apartment seemed to be a shrine dedicated to the animated movie Frozen with every wall covered by photos of the two sisters, Ana and Elsa.”

It’s called Psychological operations (PSYOP). Part of the reason they do it is to garner some sort of creepy fame. We need to control the message and the message is that they are total f-ing losers. Or we can just continue to run serpentine.

I don’t have the answers on proper gun legislation, but I’m almost certain that making them easier to purchase than a bottle of gin isn’t the solution.