Has anyone else noticed a disturbing trend with the media? The number of articles on stuff that’s gonna kill ya? It seems like every few weeks there’s another in-depth article on dangerous stuff. Especially stuff you enjoy.
I think there’s a seriously morbid team of producers out there and they need psychological help. I’m not arguing the science. People really do need to know the risks as they surface. Just please don’t beat me over the head with it.
TWO DRINKS A WEEK?! Come on! Can you imagine trying to float this idea in certain countries in Europe? It seems that the Temperance Union is alive and well in Canada. Even the previous guidelines just showed that the boffins couldn’t add. It used to be something like two a day and 10 per week. Lemme see … two times seven … Damn. I ran out of fingers. I didn’t pay any attention to that guideline, either.
Okay, so more than the recommended limit increases yer risk of certain cancers. I don’t mean to second-guess the research and the science, but I must have been asleep when they told me what the actual risk was. Does one in a hundred people (who exceed the guidelines) contract an alcohol-related cancer? One in a thousand? What’s my risk?
The reason I ask is that I collect rums. At last count I had 51 different kinds of rum in my cabinet. And then the Christmas rums arrived, so I’ve probably got more than that. Let’s say 60, including some duplicates. The contents range from unopened 26ers, down to two-ounce heels. If you consider everything as half empty (pessimist!), that’s about 13 ounces per bottle. Times 60 is 780 ounces. A standard drink of an ounce and a half at two per week means I theoretically have 260 weeks or a five-year supply of rum. Great news, eh?
Except that, at my age, pleasure tends to minimize the concept of risk, and longevity becomes a secondary consideration. So I guess I’ll just shoulder this death knell and carry on. Sláinte!
COOKING AND/OR HEATING WITH LNG (liquefied natural gas) or propane: I grew up in Calgary where natural gas was piped to every home and business in the city. We cooked with it and heated the house and the hot water with it from 1950, until my mum sold the place in 1995. We still use propane for cooking and hot water out here in rural Yukon.
I have a friend who recently got off of oil and converted to propane, to heat his house, and I was just talking to a guy who does environmental mitigation. He says he’s cleaned up too many oil spills and, therefore, heats with propane. I guess neither of them got the memo.
Life could be worse. There’s always Medicine Hat, the city with “all hell for a basement,” according to Rudyard Kipling. He was talking about natural gas, of course.
We’re all doomed!
DARK CHOCOLATE: OK, it was contaminated; but still, the article was almost certain to make you paranoid about one of life’s simple pleasures.
DRYER LINT: Seriously? Clean out yer damn lint trap. I always thought the haze over Riverdale was woodsmoke. But I guess, on Mondays, it’s dryer lint, and it’s loaded with microplastics.
SALT: I can’t argue about salt. Not with high blood pressure. There is a mitigator, though. A few years back, a good friend was in the hospital for an extended period and was complaining about the lack of taste in his food. It was salt-free. So I got him a bottle of salt-free salt. Turns out it’s potassium—something that was good for him, for some reason. Memo to CM: Try it yerself.
SUVs VS SEDANS: There was a short piece on TV, a while ago, about a group that wanted to ban SUVs from their city streets. Must have been in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). That’s where most of these questionable ideas originate. Apparently, a common or garden-variety sedan at 50 km/h will just take yer legs out from under you (and cripple you for life), whereas an SUV will kill ya. I’m still trying to figure out if this was serious or satire. We’d better jump on the bandwagon just to be safe.
COVID: At the beginning of the pandemic, the CBC went overboard with the Covid shots. Shot after shot of shots. I counted 18 shots in one presentation! Action shots and still shots of people getting their shots. If anything contributed to people’s reluctance to get immunized, this was it. And, now, with the recurrence of measles, we’re treated to more GD shots of shots!
And if there happens to be a shortage of new “research” (that is, if they run out of things to threaten us with tomorrow), there’s always …
THE NEXT PANDEMIC: OMG!
